Service for Life

Map of Eritrea

Source: US Central Intelligence Agency. The information on
this map, including the location of the Eritrea-Ethiopia border, should not be
considered authoritative and does not imply endorsement by Human Rights Watch.

Summary

There was jubilation among
Eritreans when Eritrea formally gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1993
after a bloody 30-year war. Sixteen years later the dreams that the independent
state would be democratic and rights-adhering lie in tatters. Eritrea has
become one of the most closed and repressive states in the world. Thousands of
political prisoners are detained in prisons and underground cells; there is no
independent civil society; all independent media outlets have been shut down;
the head of the Eritrean Orthodox Church is in incommunicado detention; and
evangelical Christians are rounded up and tortured on a regular basis.

President Isayas Afewerki,
who led Eritrea through much of its extraordinary struggle for independence,
now uses an unresolved border dispute with Ethiopia to keep Eritrea on a
permanent war footing. For much of the adult male and female population, the
mandatory 18-month period of national service extends for years, with a large
proportion involuntarily serving in the Eritrean army. People under the age of
50 can rarely obtain exit visas to leave the country. Those who try and flee
without documentation run the risk of imprisonment and torture—or being
shot at the border. The Eritrean government collectively punishes the families
of those who desert from national service with exorbitant fines or
imprisonment. Despite these risks, Eritrea is now among the highest refugee
producing nations in the world.

This report documents the
Eritrean government’s responsibility for patterns of serious human rights
violations: arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, forced labor, and inhuman
conditions in detention; rigid restrictions on freedom of movement and
expression; and religious persecution. It also analyzes abuses related to the
practice of indefinite conscription into national and military service, the
lack of any provision for conscientious objection, and the risks facing
refugees even after they flee.

During the first few years of
independence the outlook was not so bleak. Independent media flourished, the army
began demobilizing some of those who had fought during the long war of
liberation from Ethiopia, and in 1997 the National Assembly ratified a new
constitution that enshrined democratic principles and fundamental human rights.

Then in 1998 a border dispute
with Ethiopia flared up into an extraordinarily bloody and costly two-year war.
Elections were postponed, mass conscription was re-instated, and tens of thousands
died before the internationally mediated Algiers Agreement brought hostilities
to an end in 2000. This provided for the establishment of a neutral
Eritrea-Ethiopia Border Commission to determine the border by binding
arbitration.

After the war, many expected
the stalled democratic transition to revive. Instead, in September 2001,
leading members of the government who publicly called for substantial reforms
including “free and fair elections” were rounded up and detained.
Mass arrests of journalists and perceived opponents of the regime occurred
simultaneously, along with the closure of all independent media organizations.
As of March 2009, the whereabouts and condition of most of the individuals
detained in 2001 remain unknown.

Since 2001 widespread
systematic human rights violations have become routine, including arbitrary
arrest and detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, and severe restrictions
on freedom of expression, freedom of worship, and freedom of movement.

In 2002, with the
announcement of the Warsai Yekalo Development Campaign (WDYC), a national
social and economic development effort, the statutory national service of 18
months was indefinitely extended so that all male and female adults must be
available to work at the direction of the state in various capacities until the
age of 40—now often 50 or 55 in practice.

Indefinite national service
starts with six months of military training followed by 12 months’
deployment either in military service or working for some other government
ministry at the direction of the Ministry of Defense. Some are also drafted to
work for the companies owned and operated by the military or ruling party elites
that dominate the economy.

National service conscripts
are paid a survival wage that is insufficient to meet the basic needs of those
with families. Indefinite conscription is massively unpopular and the
repressive apparatus required to enforce the policy is national in scope. Since
2003 all secondary school students must complete their final 12th
grade year inside Sawa military camp, effectively starting their military
training.

A national network of jails
and detention facilities holds those who try and avoid national service
alongside political prisoners and those imprisoned solely for their religious beliefs.
Torture, cruel, and degrading treatment, and forced labor are routine. Detention
conditions are inhumane with detainees often held in underground cells or in
shipping containers in dangerously high temperatures.

Members of minority Christian
churches have faced particular persecution under the Eritrean government.
Conscripts found reading the bible or praying in the training camps are
detained and often tortured. Police and military regularly round up suspected
Christians and raid prayer meetings in private homes. Thousands are now behind
bars.

Those who try and flee the
country are imprisoned or risk being shot on sight at the border. Refugees who
fled to Malta, Sudan, Egypt, Libya, and other countries and were forcibly
repatriated have faced detention and torture upon return to Eritrea. Given the
pervasive human rights violations in Eritrea and the risk of torture faced by
those who are returned, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) has advised against all deportations to Eritrea, including of rejected
asylum seekers. All refoulement of Eritrean refugees should end.

Eritrea’s tense
relations with Ethiopia continue to be the dominant factor in Eritrean foreign
policy and an important element in domestic dynamics. Although both governments
agreed in advance to accept the decision of the border commission, Ethiopia
reneged and failed to cede control over the village of Badme—awarded to
Eritrea in the commission’s final decision—or to allow physical
demarcation of the border to proceed without further “dialogue.”
Eritrea uses this unresolved dispute to try to justify the mass militarization
of society and the suspension of fundamental rights.

Since independence Eritrea
has had hostile relations and/or border disputes with all of its
neighbors—Djibouti, Ethiopia, Sudan, as well as Yemen across the Red Sea.
It has regularly supported armed opposition against governments with whom it
has disputes, a common regional strategy also used by Ethiopia and Sudan.
Eritrea and Ethiopia’s proxy war in neighboring Somalia has been
particularly damaging. Eritrea’s support for the Islamic Courts Union
(ICU) and Ethiopian rebel movements was one factor in Ethiopia’s
intervention in Somalia in 2006 to oust the ICU and support the Somali
Transitional Federal Government. That intervention provoked an increasingly
brutal conflict in which thousands of civilians have been killed and more than
a million people displaced from Mogadishu. Since the conflict escalated,
numerous countries, including Eritrea and Ethiopia, have violated the UN arms
embargo on Somalia. Eritrea has helped to strengthen armed groups who have
committed serious abuses against civilians, including the militant Islamist
al-Shabaab.

With a new administration
establishing itself in Washington, DC, and the European Union entering a new
phase of development assistance, key governments have an important opportunity
to try to resolve the downward spiral in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea plays a
critical role in the region and. The United Nations, African Union members, the
United States, and the EU should take urgent, coordinated action to defuse
regional tensions including demanding meaningful steps towards the restoration
of the rule of law in Eritrea and an end to the Eritrean government’s
brutal treatment of its own citizens.

Methodology

This report is based on
research conducted between September 2008 and January 2009 by several
researchers in the Africa division of Human Rights Watch.

Due to severe restrictions on
freedom of movement and expression and the serious security risks individuals
could face if they communicated with Human Rights Watch staff on the ground in
Eritrea, Human Rights Watch decided to conduct most of the research for this
report outside Eritrea by interviewing refugees.

Human Rights Watch
researchers interviewed 53 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers in Italy, the
United Kingdom, and Djibouti. All interviews with the exception of four were
with asylum seekers and refugees who had left Eritrea within the last 18 months,
and therefore had the most up-to-date experience of conditions in the country.
Most of the refugees were men aged 18 to 50; women constituted only a small
proportion of the refugees in Italy and Djibouti.

In order to ensure the
confidentiality of the interviews and cross-check information, the interviews
were generally conducted in private in a separate room, with only the
interviewee, a Human Rights Watch researcher, and a translator present to
translate from Tigrinya into English—where translation was necessary.
Some interviewees spoke sufficient English for Human Rights Watch to conduct
the interview without translation. Human Rights Watch visited five different
towns in Italy to interview different groups of refugees and worked with
several different translators in an effort to ensure that the translation was
unbiased.

Many of the refugees were
fearful of describing their experiences in Eritrea because they were concerned
that doing so could result in repercussions for their families. After Human
Rights Watch explained the confidential nature of the interviews, some
interviewees were chosen at random and other people volunteered to speak.
Despite the wide variety of research locations, the interviews were consistent
in describing patterns of abuses and conditions in various detention
facilities. The accounts were also cross-checked with other independent sources
to ensure their credibility. In some cases where specific incidents could not
be cross-checked with independent sources, we have included descriptions of the
abuse if we identified the case as part of a broader pattern independently
documented by other credible sources.

Although Human Rights Watch
did not conduct a formal fact-finding investigation in Eritrea due to the high
risk posed to interviewees, a researcher did visit the country informally to
cross-check certain areas of information.

Researchers also interviewed
Eritrean academics, NGO activists, and journalists in exile in Italy and the UK
as well as seven non-Eritrean academics, journalists, and experts based in
London and four diplomats and international officials who live and work in
Eritrea. Researchers also drew on medico-legal reports documenting evidence of torture in the cases of people
fleeing to the UK prepared by the Medical
Foundation for Care of the Victims of Torture, based in the UK. Between 2007 and 2008 the Medical Foundation
received more than 150 requests for help from Eritreans claiming to have
suffered torture and/or ill-treatment.
Human Rights Watch also obtained documents from the Eritrean embassies in
London and Washington, DC.

Recommendations

To the Government of Eritrea

·Unconditionally
release, or charge and bring before a court of law all persons being detained
for political reasons, including the members of the G-15 and imprisoned
journalists.

·Issue clear,
public orders to the security forces to cease the arbitrary arrest and
detention, and torture of people based on their religious beliefs.

·Immediately
allow independent monitors access to all known and secret Eritrean detention
facilities. Notify family members of the whereabouts of detainees and restore
visiting rights, access to legal representation, and respect international
standards of law in the treatment of prisoners.

·Investigate
and prosecute all government officials, including military officers, suspected
of committing murder, rape, torture, or cruel and degrading treatment of
detainees and national service conscripts.

·Publicly
affirm the rights to freedom of expression, opinion, religion, association, and
movement, and publicly state that no one may be imprisoned for exercising his
or her non-violent opinions or beliefs. Put an end to discrimination against
Jehovah’s Witnesses.

·Rescind the
suspension of the private press and permit the establishment of independent
media outlets.

·End the
practice of indefinite national service and begin a process of phased
demobilization for those who have served for more than the statutory 18 months.

·Cease using
national service conscripts as forced labor for private enterprises.

·End the
requirement of exit visas and travel permits for travel outside and within
Eritrea and allow full freedom of movement within Eritrea for Eritrean citizens
and for those seeking to work in Eritrea, with due regard to reasonable
national security concerns.

·Publicly
rescind the shoot-to-kill policy for those suspected of trying to cross
Eritrea’s borders without exit visas, and issue orders to military and
other security forces to that effect.

·Cease
recruitment of any children under the age of 18 into military service and
training.

·Implement the
1997 constitution, approve a political party law, and begin preparations for
democratic elections with international monitoring throughout the process.

·Invite
independent and impartial humanitarian agencies seeking to provide assistance
to assess humanitarian needs and facilitate their unhindered access to
civilians in need.

To the
United States and the European Union

·Insist that
Eritrea implement the 1997 constitution, charge or release all political
prisoners, end forced labor, and prepare for democratic elections.

To Donors: the European Commission, the World Bank, and UN
Agencies

·Condition
future development cooperation with Eritrea on progress on fundamental human
rights issues such as the release of political prisoners, access by independent
monitors to detention facilities, and other benchmarks for progress on human
rights in line with article 96 of the European Commission’s Cotonou
agreement.

·Stipulate
that donor-funded projects should not be implemented by conscripts engaged in
forced labor.

To the African Union

Call for the
recommendations of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’
Rights, including the immediate release and compensation of the imprisoned
members of the G-15, to be implemented.

Immediately cease any
deportations of Eritrean refugees to Eritrea, consistent with guidance
from UNHCR, for those countries that do not have functioning asylum
procedures according to international standards. Permit UNHCR access to
Eritrean asylum seekers in order to screen them for refugee status.

To the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees

·Intervene in
a timely fashion to prevent all instances of refoulement of refugees or asylum
seekers to Eritrea and work with governments to find alternative solutions to
return if those governments are unwilling to honor their international
obligations. Publicly condemn any governments that commit refoulement of
Eritrean refugees or asylum seekers.

Part 1: Background

Historical Context

Eritrea, which occupies an
area of 120,000 square kilometers, borders Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. It
consists of a high central plateau, lowlands in the west, and a long,
strategically important coastline along the Red Sea. Eritrea’s
approximately 4 million people are roughly equally divided between Christians,
mostly residents of the highlands, and Muslims, largely located in the
lowlands. Most Eritreans belong to the Tigre and Tigrinya ethnic groups and are
linguistically divided among native Tigrinya and Arabic speakers, with smaller
segments of the population speaking a variety of other languages.[1]

Contemporary Eritrea had its
genesis in 1890, when Italy consolidated land it had acquired along the Red Sea
Coast from Egypt. Between 1900 and 1908, Italy and the Ethiopian Emperor,
Menelik II, signed three treaties purporting to establish the boundary between
the Italian colony and Ethiopia. Italy’s oppressive colonial rule ended
with World War II, when the British assumed interim administration of Eritrea.

Ignoring the pleas of many
Eritreans for independence, in 1950 the United Nations General Assembly voted
on a US-backed plan to merge Eritrea with Ethiopia as “an autonomous unit
federated with Ethiopia under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian crown.”[2]In 1951, a UN-appointed
commissioner oversaw the drafting of a constitution and the election of an
Eritrean Assembly. British rule ended in 1952, a few months after the Eritrean
National Assembly adopted the constitution.

Ethiopia, then ruled by
Emperor Haile Selassie, soon encroached on Eritrea’s illusory autonomy
and self-government.[3] By 1954 political parties were banned, the only
independent Eritrean newspaper was closed, and by the late 1950s the Eritrean
Assembly was forced to replace Tigrinya and Arabic, the official and most
commonly spoken languages in Eritrea, with Amharic, the official language of
Ethiopia.[4]A strike by Eritrean labor unions
was violently suppressed. The federation was officially abolished by imperial
Ethiopian decree on November 16, 1962.[5] The United Nations remained silent as Ethiopia
unilaterally repudiated the 1950 UN resolution.[6]

Ethiopia’s repressive
policies provoked a 30-year war of national liberation that continued after
Haile Selassie was ousted in 1974 by Mengistu Haile Miriam and his Marxist
military government, known as the Derg (“the committee” in
Amharic). The conflict killed an estimated 65,000 Eritrean fighters and 40,000
civilians, maimed many times more, and caused perhaps as many as 700,000
Eritreans to flee to Sudan, the Middle East, and elsewhere around the world.[7]During the 1960s and early 1970s,
an armed opposition movement called the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) led the
insurgency against Ethiopia.[8] The Ethiopian military responded with collective
punishment of the rural population, including the use of food as a weapon of
war, scorched earth campaigns, forced relocation, and mass arrests, torture,
unfair trials, and summary executions.[9]

By the 1970s a breakaway
faction of the ELF had emerged, splintering the insurgency along ethnic and
ideological lines. The breakaway faction became the Eritrean People’s
Liberation Front (EPLF), led by Isayas Afewerki. Conflict between the ELF and
EPLF inside Eritrea and in neighboring Sudan was at times intense between 1972
and 1975, and sometimes had a brutal impact on civilians.[10]

Unlike the original ELF
leaders, who were mostly Muslims from the lowlands focused on independence, the
mainly Tigrinya-speaking Christian highlanders who began to join the insurgency
in the mid-1960s, and on a much larger scale in the 1970s, were largely
secular, better educated, and imbued with Maoist and Marxist-Leninist ideology,
intent not only on obtaining independence but on transforming Eritrean society.[11] That was especially true after new members returned
from military and other training in Communist or Communist-aligned countries.[12]

The EPLF could be ruthless in
dealing with dissenters. In 1974 it executed at least 11 dissidents. The
victims, pejoratively known as the manqa (or menkaa) group,
objected to the Soviet-style “democratic centralism” used by the
leadership to impose policy decisions and to the use of force to suppress
criticism.[13]The leadership’s actions,
according to one authority, “set the tone for the way in which Eritrean
society was mobilized by the leadership both during the armed struggle and
after liberation.”[14]

In 1976, 150 EPLF members
held an organizational meeting, at which Isayas Afewerki was chosen secretary-general.[15] As Dan Connell, a close observer of the EPLF has
noted, a principal difference between the EPLF and its predecessors “was
its commitment to simultaneous social and political struggle.... [I]t worked to
transform the society it fought to liberate.”[16]In the absence of any major
outside assistance, “[t]hroughout, the watchword was self reliance: doing
more with less.”[17]

The war in Eritrea
contributed to the overthrow in 1974 of Ethiopia’s emperor, Haile
Selassie. Mengistu’s Soviet-backed Derg rejected negotiations with
the EPLF and ELF and opted for continued warfare and internal repression. But
by the late 1970s the Eritrean rebel movements controlled almost 90 percent of
Eritrea and an Ethiopian rebel movement called the Tigray People’s Liberation
Front (TPLF) was gaining ground in Ethiopia’s own northern Tigray region.[18]The Derg launched massive
air and ground offensives in Tigray and Eritrea in response.[19] By 1982 the Derg had instituted tight controls
over the civilian population in Eritrea, as well as on Eritreans throughout
Ethiopia, including dusk-to-dawn curfews and stringent travel controls.[20] The Derg also encouraged civilians to spy on
each other and placed those who made suggestions or protests at neighborhood
meetings under surveillance or arrest, torture, or extrajudicial execution.

In early 1988 the EPLF and
the TPLF, led by current Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, agreed to
coordinate operations in a tactical alliance in spite of ongoing tensions
between the two groups. Although the Derg tried to crush the EPLF and
TPLF with saturation bombing, massive manpower, and severe famine,[21] by early 1991 the EPLF had defeated the Ethiopian
army, which had been dislodged almost everywhere in Eritrea except Asmara. With
the defeat of the Derg in May 1991, an EPLF Transitional
Government was formed in Eritrea and a provisional government established in
Addis Ababa by a coalition of Ethiopian armed movements called the Ethiopian
People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), led by Meles Zenawi,
agreed to hold a referendum on Eritrea’s future within two years, by
1993.

The first years of
independence

In April 1993 Eritreans
living in the country as well as those dispersed in 40 other countries voted
overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a vote certified by both the
UN and the Ethiopian government as free and fair.[22] In 1994 the EPLF dissolved itself, voting to
transform itself into a mass political party—the People’s Front for
Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).[23] There were high hopes in Eritrea and abroad that
independence would bring freedom and true self-governance.

In 1994 the Front established
a transitional 150-member National Assembly to govern pending adoption of a
constitution and elections. The Assembly’s membership was very narrowly
based. Half consisted of the PFDJ central committee and the other half of PFDJ
members selected by party leaders. The Assembly immediately chose the former
EPLF leader and interim President Isayas Afeweki, now the PFDJ’s
secretary-general, as Eritrea’s president.[24]

Alarmingly, arbitrary
detentions, allegations of summary executions, “disappearances,”
and suspicious deaths continued, marring the period between 1991 and 1998.
Monitoring groups reported that over 100 political prisoners were detained in
1991 and subsequent years and held without charge or trial.[25]Some died in captivity and some
disappeared—presumed to have been executed.[26] In addition, the government revoked the citizenship
rights of Jehovah’s Witnesses because they allegedly refused to
participate in the liberation struggle and the 1993 referendum, and refused
compulsory national military service (see below).[27]Jehovah’s Witnesses were
denied business and drivers licenses, passports, marriage certificates, and
national identity cards essential for travel within Eritrea.[28]Three Jehovah’s Witnesses
arrested in September 1994 for refusing military service remain in
incommunicado detention without charge or trial more than 14 years later.[29]

Also alarming was the
practice of secret administrative “trials” of opponents and the
creation in 1996 of “special courts” outside the normal judicial
system.[30] These extrajudicial bodies, staffed largely by
military officers untrained in law, meet in secret, have authority to retry
cases from civilian courts, are not limited by procedural rules, and issue
judgments reviewable only by the president.

By contrast, a promising
early development was the country-wide consultation and adoption of a
constitution for a multi-party democratic system containing a robust list of
human rights.[31] Although the interim National Assembly adopted the
constitution in 1997, it has never been promulgated and implemented. On the
contrary, in subsequent years, the government systematically denied Eritrean
citizens the freedoms and rights embodied in the document. The government
claims the border problems with Ethiopia and external interference,
particularly from the United States, as the main impediments to political
progress.[32]The government relies on similar
justifications for never having held multi-party elections initially scheduled
for 1997.[33]

The 1998-2000 border
war with Ethiopia

Eritrea’s relations
with Ethiopia remained relatively close for the first few years after
independence. But by 1997 there were increasing tensions over economic and
currency issues and disputed pockets of the un-demarcated border. According to
a Claims Commission established by treaty at the end of the war, the immediate
cause of the intense two-year conflict was a May 12, 1998 attack by two brigades
of Eritrean regular troops, supported by tanks and artillery, on the small
border town of Badme and nearby areas under Ethiopian administration.[34] Eritrea claimed that its attack was prompted by an
earlier attack by Ethiopian Tigrayan militia on an Eritrean border patrol. The
Claims Commission held these “minor incidents,” if they occurred as
Eritrea claimed, did not justify Eritrea’s full-scale attack.[35]

During the war, Ethiopia
expelled most Eritrean residents who had voted in the 1993 referendum and confiscated
their property. In turn Eritrea detained thousands of Ethiopians still living
in the country in harsh conditions before expelling them.[36]

Fighting was deadly but
inconclusive until June 2000 when the two governments agreed to a ceasefire
after international—particularly US—pressure on Meles Zenawi.[37] On December 12, 2000, Eritrea and Ethiopia signed an
Organisation of African Unity-sponsored peace agreement in Algiers.[38]Among its provisions was the
creation of a neutral five-person international boundary commission “to
limit and demarcate” the border in accordance with colonial-era maps and
treaties.[39]Both governments agreed in advance
that the Commission’s conclusions would be final and binding, but when
the Commission concluded in April 2002 that Badme would fall on the Eritrean
side of the border,[40] Ethiopia reneged and refused to permit demarcation in
that sector without prior direct talks between the two governments. Eritrea
insisted on implementation of the judgment, including demarcation in the Badme
sector, and refused to engage in any further discussion with Ethiopia.[41]

After a four-year impasse,
the Commission announced that the boundary would automatically be deemed
demarcated by map coordinates as of November 26, 2007.[42] After persistent interference and obstruction from
Eritrea,[43] including arrests and harassment of UN staff, a
United Nations peacekeeping force (UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, UNMEE),
deployed to patrol a buffer zone along the disputed border in 2000, was
terminated by the UN Security Council in July 2008.[44]

Today, tens of thousands of
heavily armed Ethiopian and Eritrean troops are still deployed within meters of
each other.[45]Even as each government publicly
claims it has no intention to reignite the war, fighting could easily resume
through accident or design. Neither side shows any sign of compromise on the
positions they have taken: Ethiopia insists on further dialogue before
demarcation of the border; Eritrea demands that the Commission’s judgment
be implemented through demarcation before it will agree to talks with Ethiopia.[46]

Crackdown on internal dissent since 2001

Even as President Isayas insists on scrupulous adherence to law with
regard to the border dispute, he has systematically quashed opposition and
independent civil society and denied the rule of law within the country. No
elections have been held since independence, the interim National Assembly has
not been convened since January 2002, and the judicial system has atrophied. As
one observer puts it, the formal structures of government and the single ruling
party “are window-dressing for a system of carefully circumscribed
one-man rule.”[47]

The result has been
increasingly oppressive rule unfettered by law or other restraints. In May
2001, 15 members of the 75-member PFDJ central council, including one former
minister and one former vice-president, issued an open letter criticizing
several of Isayas’s actions as “illegal and
unconstitutional.” The “Group of 15” (G-15) letter demanded
that the president convene the PFDJ’s governing bodies. He refused.[48]

The government began
large-scale arrests of critics in July 2001 with the arrest of University of
Asmara student union president Semere Kesete for protesting management of the
university’s mandatory summer work program. When other students protested
Semere’s arrest, the government rounded up about 400 students, beat them,
and trucked them to a work camp in Wi’a, west of Massawa. Another 1,700
university students soon joined them there. Wi’a’s summer daytime
temperatures exceed 104°F (40°C) and the camp is a favored place of
punishment. Two of the arrested students are reported to have died of heat
stroke.[49]

On September 18 and 19, 2001,
as the world was preoccupied with the September 11 attacks in the United
States, the government arrested 11 of the G-15.[50]On September 19, the second day of
the G-15 arrests, the government withdrew the licenses of all of the
country’s eight independent newspapers and arrested 10 journalists
(others had been warned of the crackdown and managed to escape the country).[51] The government claimed that the newspapers had
violated the 1996 press proclamation and had undermined national unity.[52]Although the government announced
that it would soon resume licensing of private newspapers, it has never
accepted applications and it currently controls all domestic media.

The G-15 members,
journalists, and dozens of others arrested in September 2001 remain
incarcerated, incommunicado and without charge or trial as of March 2009. There
have been detailed but unconfirmed reports that the original group of 31 people
was held in isolation cells in a remote jail called Eiraeiro, located northwest
of the town of Ghatielay, and built expressly to hold them.[53] At least one of the 31 detainees is believed to have died
in captivity as a result of harsh conditions, deliberate ill-treatment, and
denial of medical treatment.[54]One of the journalists
detained—Dawit Isaak—was reported to have been moved to a hospital
in February 2009 due to serious illness.[55]

The arrests of the G-15
members and journalists triggered a wave of mass arrests of suspected critics
that has continued until the time of writing. Eritreans from all walks of life
have been affected, including government officials, leaders of
government-sponsored labor unions, businessmen, and government journalists. Few
have been freed—and usually only when extremely ill and likely to die:
otherwise they are incarcerated indefinitely with little prospect of release.
Estimates of the number of Eritreans who currently languish in jail without
charge or trial are difficult to confirm but range from 5,000 to 10,000,
excluding national service deserters, who may number in the tens of thousands.[56]

Among those especially
vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and detention are Eritreans attempting to
practice their religion. In 2002 the government ordered all religious bodies
other than those affiliated with the official Eritrean religions—Islam,
Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran Christian churches—to
close. Evangelical Christians are regularly rounded up and imprisoned and
tortured. And in 2006 the then-septuagenarian Orthodox patriarch had his
lifetime appointment rescinded for protesting the arrest of priests belonging
to a reformist wing of the Church. He has been detained ever since and his
whereabouts are unknown; the priests remain imprisoned.

Eritrea’s Regional Role

The Eritrean government
claims that the unresolved border dispute with Ethiopia justifies maintaining
the country on a war footing. But in its short history as a state, Eritrea has
had tense relations with most of its regional neighbors.[57]The continuing border dispute and
resulting state of no-war-no-peace with Ethiopia dominate Eritrea’s
domestic and foreign policy.[58] Eritrea does have identifiable security concerns,
particularly given that Ethiopia supports Eritrean opposition
groups—albeit weak and fractured ones—against the government, but
at home President Isayas uses the unresolved border dispute to keep Eritrea on
a war footing and justify indefinite mass mobilization and repression.

Eritrea also supports a
variety of longstanding Ethiopian armed opposition groups, such as the Oromo
Liberation Front (OLF) and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), against
the Ethiopian government, and generally seeks to undermine Ethiopian influence
wherever it can in the region. In Somalia, Eritrea has trained, armed, and
financed militias opposed to the Ethiopian-allied Transitional Federal
Government. The reports of the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia’s arms
embargo consistently list Eritrea (as well as Ethiopia and many other states)
among the significant violators of the arms embargo on Somalia.[59]This style of tit-for-tat foreign
policy is not new. For years Eritrea’s relations with Sudan were also
strained by mutual support for each other’s opposition groups, but
relations normalized in 2006.

Ethiopian reliance on the
port of Djibouti is one reason why Eritrea and Djibouti engaged in a war of
words over their common border in 1996. Friction increased again in 2008 when
Eritrea began digging trenches on Ras Doumeira mountain on Djibouti’s
side of the border.[60]On June 10, 2008, Eritrean forces
clashed with Djiboutian troops while apparently in pursuit of military
deserters.[61] The United Nations Security Council issued a
presidential statement on June 12, 2008, calling on both sides to commit to a
ceasefire and to withdraw troops to the status quo ante. Eritrean troops
nonetheless continue to occupy the invaded Djiboutian territory.

In January 2009 the UN Security
Council adopted a unanimous resolution demanding that Eritrea withdraw within
five weeks and that it attempt to resolve the border issue by diplomatic means.[62]Eritrea immediately rejected the
demand, claiming the invaded territory is Eritrean soil and that it therefore
cannot accept a resolution demanding “withdrawal of its forces from its
own territory.”[63]

The Humanitarian
Situation

Both Ethiopia and Eritrea
suffered an enormous economic, political, and human toll from their border war
and are paying a significant price for the continued deployment of tens of
thousands of troops along the border. Along with the rest of the Horn of
Africa, famine and drought pose major challenges for Eritrea. Anecdotal
evidence suggests that hunger and malnutrition are on the rise.[64] However, little reliable data is available and
Eritrea refuses to permit surveys needed to independently assess needs. There
are restrictions on the movement of foreigners, making independent monitoring
of conditions in the country very difficult.[65]

In a recent visit to the
country, members of the European Parliament noted that there is no precise data
about the levels of food insecurity in Eritrea.[66]The World Food Program (WFP)
suspended food distribution programs after a policy clash: the government
monetized all food aid and seized WFP stocks in 2006, stating that it was
implementing a cash-for-work program in lieu of food aid distribution.[67]

The Eritrean government has
also placed extensive restrictions on the operations of international nongovernmental
aid organizations (NGOs). In 2005 it adopted new registration requirements that
required international organizations to have US$2 million in capital in
Eritrea, imposed taxes on all imports including food, among other provisions,[68] and in 2006 expelled a number of international nongovernmental
organizations working in the country.[69] Currently there is only one national nongovernmental
organization registered under the 2005 NGO proclamation and the work of the
nine remaining international NGOs is extremely circumscribed.[70] The EU report concluded that:

While there are no
independent verifications for reports about ‘silent famine’ and
extreme malnutrition, several indicators suggest the risk of a humanitarian
crisis as in other Horn of Africa countries. Food subsistence has been down
from about 70-75 percent in 2007 to 30-35 percent this year due to the drought.
Given the high food and fuel prices (Eritrea being 100 percent dependent on oil
imports) and the weakness of the economy, it is unclear how additional food
imports can be financed. After 60 days of overdue payment of debt obligations,
the World Bank had to suspend the payment of new credits end of October 2008
for the first time.[71]

In its Humanitarian Aid
Decision of February 2008, the European Commission warned of “a
deteriorating humanitarian situation” and “worrying humanitarian
indicators” in Eritrea, namely, a Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rate
for under five children of over 15 percent in some areas of Eritrea, a rate
“far above any emergency threshold,” and malnutrition among
pregnant women of 35 to 54 percent.[72] In particular, the Commission warned, “with
very little food aid being imported, due to the current Government monetization
policy, the already fragile food security situation could deteriorate
dramatically.”[73]

Part 2: Human Rights Violations

Overview

Eritrea is one of the
world’s youngest countries and has rapidly become one of the most
repressive. There is no freedom of speech, no freedom of movement, no freedom
of worship, and much of the adult male and female population is conscripted
into indefinite national service where they receive a token wage. Dissent is
not tolerated. Any criticism or questioning of government policy is ruthlessly
punished. Detention, torture, and forced labor await anyone who disagrees with
the government, anyone who attempts to avoid military service or flee the
country without permission, and anyone found practicing or suspected of
practicing faiths the government does not sanction. A scholar, friend to and
close observer of Eritrea over many years said, “Eritrea is now a very
grim place. This is a government that doesn’t trust anybody, least of all
its own people.”[74]

Some of the roots of this
human rights catastrophe are to be found in the strict discipline of the
independence struggle, Eritrea’s fragile regional security situation, and
the government’s paranoid and totalitarian response to the situation. The
government of Eritrea claims that Eritrea is a victim of international interference
and that this explains the suspension of human rights and democratic procedures
and the mass militarization of society. In reality most observers think this is
President Isayas’s justification for a mode of governance characterized
by mistrust, brutality, and presidential whim, in other words, a dictatorship
based on denial of basic human rights. Dan Connell, a former supporter of the
EPLF, noted, “With no public space for political discussion, let alone
protest, and severe constraints on the organizational expression of the most
benign social or economic interests—that is, the blanket suppression of
civil society—the possibility to contest the PFDJ’s grip on power
is nonexistent.”[75]

Like its predecessor the
EPLF, the ruling PFDJ party is intensely disciplined and driven by the
self-reliance and nationalism forged in the 30-year struggle for independence
from Ethiopia, a struggle that succeeded against tremendous odds and with
little support from the outside world. The common pattern in the
government’s persecution is the perceived threat the victims pose to the
PFDJ vision of national unity and national security. Thus, deserters and
refugees are particularly singled out as “traitors” or spies, as
too are journalists, academics, opposition politicians, and anyone who voices
an opinion at variance with accepted propaganda. The regime’s
preoccupation with non-traditional Christians, even though they are not
politically significant, and increasingly many believers in other organized
religions, appears to be rooted in a broader concern over institutions and
movements that are potentially uncontrolled—or led by individuals who are
not controlled—by the state.

There are also historical
dimensions to the regime’s targeting of particular groups. Individuals
who are particularly vulnerable include those perceived to be sympathetic to
Ethiopia or supportive of the ELF—the rival independence movement crushed
by Isayas’s EPLF in the 1970s. This perception on the part of the regime
means that people living in the lowlands who originally provided support to the
ELF—including Muslims and the Kunama ethnic group, among others—are
seen as unreliable and are especially vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and
detention, and other abuses.

Unlike earlier military
mobilizations for the war of independence and the 1998-2000 war with Ethiopia,
the current mass and indefinite mobilization of the population into national
service—ostensibly in readiness for a potential Ethiopian
invasion—is increasingly unpopular. The repressive apparatus required to
keep so many unwilling people conscripted and mobilized is extensive: summary
executions, brutal punishments, reprisals against families, and a huge prison
infrastructure outside the rule of law in which acts of torture and cruel
treatment are commonplace and committed with impunity. National service
conscripts serve in the army, work on national development projects, or are
loaned to private firms controlled by army officers and government allies for
their gain. Compensation is minimal and non-compliance is not an option.

As a result of the
multi-faceted repression, Eritreans are increasingly fleeing their country. It
should be pointed out that most Eritreans leave with regret the very country
that they fought for so long to liberate. Many do so with a deep sense of shame
and guilt—some even blame themselves and suggested to Human Rights Watch
that talking about human rights in Eritrea to a foreign organization was
tantamount to treason. But as one elderly man who fought for the EPLF in the
struggle said: “I sacrificed my life for the prosperity, development and
freedom of my country but the reverse is true... we did not spend 65,000
martyrs for this!”[76]

Arbitrary Arrest, Detentions, and
“Disappearances”

Eritrea routinely arbitrarily
detains people who criticize the president, the government, and the military,
those who try and evade national service or desert from the army, and those who
practice or are perceived to be members of unregistered Christian religions.
Once arrested, many detainees “disappear”—their families are
unable to ascertain their whereabouts and are only occasionally informed if the
individuals die in custody.[77]

Political detentions

The most famous cases of
enforced disappearances are the members of the PFDJ ruling council who were arrested
on September 18, 2001—the so-called G-15—and the hundreds of other
government officials and journalists who were detained alongside them. Eleven
of the G-15 are still in incommunicado detention.[78]Dozens more have been detained
since.[79]The level of paranoia on the part
of the government has reached such a level that, according to one diplomat in
Asmara, “people who present no risk to the security of the state are
regularly persecuted.”[80]

Those perceived to be a
threat to the regime are picked up in house-to-house searches, often at night.
Two young refugees described to Human Rights Watch their experience seeing
their parents arrested at home during the night by soldiers without any
apparent reason.[81]A 26-year-old, serving in the
military, having been conscripted at the age of 16, returned home on leave to
find that his father had been arrested and taken away by military personnel
during the night, apparently for asking questions about the G-15. His father
was a leader from the lowlands, near the border with Ethiopia, and had not fled
when the Ethiopians controlled his area during the 1998-2000 war. When he
himself persisted in questioning his father’s whereabouts, he was jailed
in 2005.[82]

In another case, a young man
saw his father, a former ELF military leader, taken from their home at night in
2005 by two policemen. He told Human Rights Watch, “After two weeks my
mum and I went to the police. They told us, ‘It is not your goddamn
business,’ not in a polite way. My father was always disagreeing with
[the government] in meetings.”[83]Two months later his
father’s body was returned. “They said he had been sick in prison.
My mother knows the officers; she was asking among them how he died. I think
she asked too many questions because then they came back and arrested me and my
mum at night.” He added, “Until now I don’t know where they
took my mum. After five months in jail I went to the military prison in Sawa, 6th
camp.”

Detention of national
and military service conscripts

Deserting from the army or
even expressing dissent over the indefinite military service is viewed as a
political issue by the government. Therefore, most prisoners held for political
reasons are detained without charge or trial for refusing or questioning
national service or for offences punishable under military law. Even where
detainees may have committed a potential crime under military law, numerous
former detainees told Human Rights Watch that there was no system of military
justice, that they were simply imprisoned on the orders of their commanders
without any courts-martial or other procedure.[84]

Human Rights Watch spoke to
over 40 deserters from the national service and the military who had fled the
country, all of whom had been thrown in jail multiple times without due
process.[85] Their alleged offences ranged from questioning the
educational curriculum to being caught in prayer meetings to being suspected of
trying to leave national service.

An officer in charge of a
military prison who subsequently fled to Djibouti explained that sentencing was
completely arbitrary and commanders decide how long people remain in jail.
Whether or not the sick are given access to medical treatment is left to the
caprice of their superior officers: “There were no rules from Asmara on
how long prisoners stay in jail, it depends on individual commanders. Prisoners
can be detained up to two years. If someone is sick they usually don’t
believe him, he might be trying to escape or does not want to be
punished.”[86]

One teacher at Mai Nehfi
technical institute said he was jailed for three months because his military
supervisors suspected him of trying to flee the country. He described how he
was detained and tortured, repeatedly asked questions about who his
collaborators were, even though he did not in fact plan on escaping. He later
escaped after serving a longer period in jail for having signed a petition
complaining about the treatment of higher education students.[87]

A young man who could not
take the punishing regime of training and forced labor at Sawa camp tried to
kill himself by throwing himself under a water truck. For that, he was
imprisoned for six months.[88]

A military driver who was
detained multiple times said, “I was detained so many times because I was
late coming back from vacation, sometimes I refused when they ordered me to
transport something in a bad place... prison, punishment, this is the life of
the military.”[89]Another national service soldier
was jailed because he too refused to do his job and spent eight months in jail
without a hearing as a result:

There’s no trial in
Eritrea. There’s no trial, there’s not even any court.... Imagine,
14 years of national service... first they put me in prison without asking any
questions. After six months they said ‘Start your work’ and I
refused. The response is to send me back to prison. [On release] they gave me a
piece of paper and I went to my camp freely. I was tired. They said, rest for
three or four days and then start your work. I said ‘No’ and they
put me inside for [another] two months.[90]

Detention of conscripts who
try to practice unregistered religions is common. Several people who escaped
from their military service told Human Rights Watch that they were arbitrarily
thrown in jail for secretly reading the Bible in Sawa camp or being caught in prayer
meetings.[91] A female conscript, jailed at least three times, was
held in a shipping container for three months in 2007 for reading the Bible.[92]Another conscript, a man who was
put in jail after a prayer meeting, was just as suddenly released: “After
five months and three weeks they just dropped me, with no procedure or
decision, on the streets of Asmara, at midnight.”[93]

Because of the secrecy in
which political detainees are held—incommunicado, in secret locations,
without the right to representation or visits, and without any kind of
independent monitoring—they are in effect, “disappeared” and
are at high risk of torture or extrajudicial execution.

Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment

The internationally accepted
definition of torture includes any act that involves the intentional infliction
of severe mental or physical pain or suffering for such purposes as the
extraction of information or a confession or as intimidation or punishment.[94]Torture is routine in Eritrea,
both for those detained in prisons and as punishment for those in military
service.

Political prisoners,
including journalists or teachers, interviewed by Human Rights Watch described
torture in custody to force them to disclose collaborators, whilst those
punished for their religious beliefs described being tortured in order to
renounce their faith. In many cases former detainees were beaten or tortured in
order to extract information, but in other situations they were simply beaten,
tied up, or left to suffer in the sun without any obvious intention to gather
information, simply as punishment.

According to eyewitness
accounts gathered by Human Rights Watch, torture and cruel, inhuman, and
degrading treatment or punishment by military officers and commanders are
systematic and “normal.”[95] While some form of discipline or punishment for
insubordination or for military crimes such as desertion is usual in a military
context, torture is unlawful in any circumstance. In Eritrea, deaths in custody
are common as a result of ill-treatment, torture, and denial of medical
treatment (see below section “Deaths in Custody”). Some deaths
appear to be deliberate killings.

Torture methods

Some of the torture methods
are inherited from the Italian period, whilst others are the methods used by
successive Ethiopian governments against suspected Eritrean liberation fighters
during the struggle. All of the torture methods described in this report are
drawn from victim and eyewitness accounts gathered by Human Rights Watch in
2008, from individuals who were interviewed independently in different
locations, and with different translators. The methods described below
correspond closely to the findings of Amnesty International in 2004 but this is
not a comprehensive list.[96]

“Helicopter”: the victim’s hands and feet are tied together
behind the back, sometimes opposite limbs, i.e. left hand to right foot, and
the victim is left face down, often outside in the hot sun. Detainees described
seeing this procedure in most of the prisons mentioned in this report, in
particular in Alla prison.[97]

“Otto” or
eight: Otto, meaning eight in Italian, is a punishment where the
hands are tied together behind the back and victims must lie on their stomachs.
This was the most common torture method noted by former conscripts and
detainees, practiced in all the prisons and in Wi’a and Sawa military
camps.

One man interviewed by Human
Rights Watch said he was tied for two weeks in the otto position, even
when he slept, because he tried to escape from Wi’a training camp.[98] A soldier deployed to Assab on the coast refused an
order and was tortured by being tied in the otto position: “My
leader ordered me to go into the sea and I refused because I have problems in
my left ear. I was punished with otto for four hours. Four hours of otto
in Assab is very bad because it’s so hot,” he said.[99]

“Ferro”: Ferro is an
Italian word for iron. The method is similar to otto described above
except that the wrists are bound with handcuffs. The prisoner may also be left
in the sun.

According to a former army
officer detained in Alla, ferro was often the punishment for those
suspected of trying to escape from the army. “If someone is suspected of
escaping then they are tied up—just hands or hands and feet, or ferro,
he said. “Individuals decide what kind of punishment is given,
there’s no law. They do not have any crimes but [people are punished
because] they hate the military or hate to be a soldier. That is the main
reason. Because everyone in Eritrea hates to be in the army.”[100]

“Jesus Christ”:
As the name suggests, the victim is
crucified by being tied with rope to a tree or a cross and then left to hang,
and sometimes beaten while hung.

A conscript who answered back
and then struck his commanding officer described being punished in this way:

My leader [of the unit]
ordered me to make charcoal that he wanted to take home to his family. But I
told him, I am in training, this is not my job, so I told him ‘No.’
He hit me. I said he cannot hit me so I hit him also...That captain together
with other leaders beat me. I still have the scars on my head [he has visible
wide scars on his head and neck]. They tied me in a crucifix style to a tree,
with my hands behind me, for two hours at a stretch, off the ground. We call it
a cross—the hands are tied to wood and you are hanging in the air. They
left me to sleep outside [on the ground] while tied up. It was hot. I got one
cup of water for half a day and bread. They asked me no questions during
punishment, there were many other people punished at the same time. Every day
people were getting different punishments. In front of everyone, with them all
watching.[101]

“Goma”: Goma is a
method involving a radial truck tire. The victim is forced to double up inside
a tire for long periods of time.

A conscript who was caught
fleeing towards the border in 2005 and imprisoned in Prima military camp was
suspected of links to the Ethiopian-backed opposition to the Eritrean
government because his mother was Ethiopian. He suffered this form of torture:

...[T]he worst is when they
put you inside a tire [goma]. You are tied inside the circle of the tire
and they [beat you with a stick and] ask who is supporting you [in Asmara], who
guided you, what kind of program did you have in Ethiopia... Another way to
make you suffer is to tie the hands behind your back, sometimes the legs as
well. This is called otto, then you are tied to a tree and punished by
hanging from a tree. There are those who died from punishment but I was
fortunate. Twice they punished me by goma. They use a Ural truck tire. I
was rolled in the tire for six hours... Luckily I am not fat. The fat man
suffers even more.[102]

Mock drowning: Called by many different names around the world, in
Eritrea this method of torture involves submerging a person’s head in water
so that s/he believes s/he will drown and was originally used by the Derg
in Eritrea.

A man described to Human
Rights Watch his experience in Alla military prison of being put in a barrel
head first, upside down and forced to answer questions after he had tried to
run away from the army four times:

They hit me everywhere in
every prison—on the head, on the feet—sometimes the body swelled.
The first time they hit you is when they catch you—they hit me—and
after two months my body became weak. They put me in a barrel of water, with
the head under water and the legs out. They beat people with electric wire in
the barrel of water. After three days when the inspector came and if you
didn’t accept or respond to his questions then you’d be punished
like this. I was interrogated with questions like: ‘Who is helping
you?’; ‘How did you get around without permission?’;
‘How did you reach the border?’; ‘Who had the master
plan?’; ‘Who was your guide?’; ‘Are you a
soldier?’ I was in the barrel five times.[103]

Beating: Beating is commonplace to the point of
“normality” and is often preceded or followed by other torture
methods. Nearly every former detainee interviewed by Human Rights Watch
described regular beatings, often daily, severe, and resulting in lasting
physical damage.

Helen Berhane, a famous
Eritrean Christian gospel singer was beaten whilst in detention and warned to
renounce her faith. She was eventually released and sought asylum in Denmark
but her legs were severely injured as a result of the beatings.[104]

Another conscript who tried
to escape described being beaten by intelligence officials: “When I was
captured they beat me badly. After three months of beatings they started
asking: ‘Whose idea was it to go?’ That was the main reason for the
beating. When they are beating people they divide you into three groups: those
they believe, those they don’t believe, those they are preparing to
beat.”[105]

Another former conscript and
detainee told Human Rights Watch he now has problems with incontinence as a
result of the beating he received in detention. He said, “Beatings were
like food in prison—every day.”[106]

There are myriad ways in
which military superiors torture subordinates or try and scare them from
escaping military service. One of the most egregious accounts gathered by Human
Rights Watch concerned unsuccessful deserters from Sawa camp being tied to a
corpse. A witness said: “One had been shot running away, the other two
had their hands tied to the feet of the dead person. They were paraded round
the camp in the back of a Toyota pick-up truck. The intention was for everyone
to see.”[107]

Many political prisoners have
suffered the full gamut of torture methods. One government journalist who was
arrested and detained in 2004 because of an article he had written raising
questions of government policy was punished first in a police station in Asmara
before being sent to Dahlak prison—a facility on an island in the Red Sea
exclusively for political prisoners (see Prison Conditions below).

I was questioned in police
station 6 in Asmara. There are different types of interrogation: physical and
psychological. The first step is asking questions if I had a hand in the G-15.
Then they change methods, try to get the truth by force. There is a big fence
in the back of the 6th police station, with a tree—they tie
you up, then throw you down on the ground, again and again. They tie you up in
the number eight position. Everybody will taste these kinds of punishment, it
is normal, like flu... Before I went to Dahlak I was hung up like Christ for 24
hours. Then after 24 hours I was thrown on the ground and they put milk and
sugar on your face and the flies come and eat your face.[108]

Prison Conditions

The prison infrastructure

The total number of prisons
in Eritrea is a mystery. Eritrea has a formidable network of detention
facilities, some of which are well known, and others secret, some authorized,
and others not. Many, if not most political prisoners and those detained for
trying to flee the country or for practicing “illegal” religions
are held incommunicado in appalling conditions, often underground or in metal
shipping containers (see below).

Keeping track of all the
detention facilities is extremely difficult because each town and
administrative district in Eritrea has a jail; wherever there is a police post
is a cell; and each military division has its own prison. In addition, there
are secret facilities about which many rumors exist, such as Eiraeiro, where
members of the G-15 are thought to be held.

There is a distinction between
the kind of treatment in civilian and military prisons, with the latter
reported to be worse than the former. As a former officer in charge of a
military facility explained, in the military:

Each operation has its own
prisons and security and each level of operations has its own prisons.
There’s the headquarters prison at operational level, then a division
central prison, brigade prisons, battalion prisons...for nine divisions there
may be more than 50 prisons. Inside Moasher [military intelligence] there are
many prisons. The officer training center has its own prison. When travelling
from town to town there are ID checks called kella. Three quarters of
these checkpoints also have prisons underground.... For civilians,
there’s a high court and ministry of justice in every town. There is a
justice and law for civilians. Political prisoners tend to be held at [...]
Dahlak, Nakhura Island, and Alla.[109]

One of the most notorious
prisons is on Dahlak Kebir island in the Red Sea—a huge jail of iron
sheet buildings and shipping containers holding refugees returned from Malta in
2002, journalists, army deserters, and opposition members.

Other prisons frequently
mentioned by former detainees were underground military facilities at Track B
(also sometimes called Tract B), a former US storage facility near Asmara
airport, Adderser, Haddis Ma’asker near Sawa and the Sudanese border in
western Eritrea, Mai Serwa, and Enda Shadushay (6th camp), located
inside Camp Sawa. All of these hold a similar mix of army deserters,
Evangelical Christians, and other political prisoners.

Many former detainees
mentioned passing through Adi Abeto—one of the main prisons outside
Asmara—on their way to other places. They stated that sometimes there are
over 1,000 prisoners detained there.[110]Other prisons are built
specifically next to construction sites to house prisoners who are used for
forced labor. Detainees described building prisons and then building military
facilities or properties for military leaders at Gedem on the coast, Haddis
Ma’askar, and Me’eter.[111]

There are also special places
for interrogation such as Alla 17, mentioned by the former intelligence
official, and 6th police station in Asmara where several
interviewees described being interrogated and tortured.[112]

A list of detention
facilities known to Human Rights Watch is included in Annex 1 on page 94.

Conditions in detention

Apart from torture and
routine punishment, detainees in Eritrea’s huge network of prisons endure
terrible conditions, forced labor, and lethal starvation. With the exception of
Ethiopian prisoners of war, the International Committee of the Red Cross is not
permitted to visit Eritrea’s military or civilian detention facilities.
The government appears completely unconcerned about detention conditions and
the fate of the people in its custody. Deaths in custody are common. Prison
guards are often demoralized and appalled by what they are asked to
do—some of them reportedly escape along with the inmates.

Horrendous descriptions of
conditions in many of Eritrea’s different prisons have been widely
documented by various nongovernmental organizations in recent years.[113]Many detainees are kept in metal
shipping containers or in underground pits in overcrowded and dangerously hot
conditions for months at a time.[114]

Dahlak prison, located on
Dahlak Kebir island in the Red Sea, is one of the most infamous detention
facilities in the country, thought to be one of the primary places for
long-term detention of political prisoners including those involuntarily repatriated
to Eritrea by other countries. Human Rights Watch spoke to several people who
had spent more than two years there. Hundreds of prisoners are kept in cells
made of zinc sheeting or underground, among them those who had been forcefully
returned from Malta in 2002.[115] In either place they described temperatures regularly
over 104°F (40°C), and were provided with only 750 milliliters of water
a day.[116]

As with all Eritrean prisons,
the detention is arbitrary: “In Dahlak there is no time limit,” a
former detainee told Human Rights Watch. “You are waiting for two things:
either someone is coming to transfer you or to kill you.”[117] This political prisoner, who was eventually released,
recalled, “When I left Dahlak I was 44 kilograms. My hemoglobin was
nothing. I needed a stick to walk. We were living underground, the temperature
was 44°C; it was unbelievable. There is no word to express
the inhumanity.”[118]

A man detained in a facility
called Halhalas, a sub-provincial prison 45 kilometers from Asmara, said,
“How can I describe...it is so bad. We got 300 grams of bread per day,
one bread per mealtime, there was no washing. We were taken to the river maybe
once a month, surrounded by military, for five minutes in the river.”
Compared to reports from Alla prison, where former inmates said they were given
one piece of bread per day, this was good.[119]Detainees described poor nutrition
and starvation rations in most facilities. A man detained in Asmara’s
Track B prison for a day before he was transferred said he received a single
biscuit.[120] Others told Human Rights Watch they received one cup
of water a day despite hot and overcrowded conditions.[121]

Everyone interviewed by Human
Rights Watch who had spent time in detention in Eritrea’s prisons
complained of overcrowding. It is such that there is a name for the style of
sleeping in detention. “‘Cortielo’ means we were
sleeping on our sides—you couldn’t move or change sides or you
would wake up your neighbors,” said one former detainee.[122]Similar conditions were reported
in Alla and in Prima military camp.[123] A former prisoner described the zinc cell where he
was held in Sawa camp as two meters by three meters with 25 to 30 people in it.
Later he was moved to Me’eter, another military prison, because the new
military camp there needed lots of labor. There, he said, “We were forced
to build bridges and a military compound.”[124]A man held in Haddis
Ma’asker said, “It was very crowded with no place to sleep.
You’re always breathing the smell of other people and most people are
sweating because it’s hot. The smell becomes toxic.”[125]

Underground

Detaining people underground
appears to be a typical practice of the Eritrean government—much of the
liberation struggle was fought from underground bunkers, some of which, it
appears, have now become jails for the some of the very people who fought for
freedom. Underground facilities were reported at Sawa, Track B, Mai Serwa,
Haddis Ma’asker, Aderser, Alla, and Dahlak, among others. There are
multiple prisons in Camp Sawa, including several underground cells. One former
inmate described “a big hole with trees across the top and then earth on
top. They don’t allow you to come out—even for six months. People
got those allergies and became sick. I was okay. But some were scratching their
skin and bleeding.”[126]

One young conscript who was
detained in an underground prison near Wi’a camp met around 30 members of
the former Ethiopian Derg regime there who had been held since the war
of liberation against Ethiopia ended in 1991—up to 17 years. They had no
idea how long they had been there, they had no idea if their children were
alive and grown up or dead. The first thing they asked the new arrival was
whether he had a razor blade so they could kill themselves. “Their crime
was to be in the Derg,” said the young conscript.[127]

Shipping Containers

According to former
detainees, shipping containers are frequently used as detention facilities in
Sawa, Mai Serwa, Dahlak, and Klima, near Assab. Shipping containers were
apparently first used to incarcerate people because of a shortage of detention
facilities.[128]

Several national service
conscripts interviewed by Human Rights Watch described being held in metal
shipping containers in Sawa camp. One of them who was taken there after both
his parents had been arbitrarily detained (they were former ELF leaders who had
then joined the EPLF) recalled: “There were seven or eight containers,
you know for bringing goods from outside. They had cut doors in them made of
steel. They put me there because they called me a political prisoner because of
my parents. The conditions were cruel, they beat you with a flex, a wire, they
beat everyone, every night. They want to make us afraid, just enough beating
not to die and not to live.”[129]

One female soldier was held
with 14 other women for 24 hours a day, some of whom had refused to have sexual
relations with their commanding officers. The only time they were allowed
outside was to go to the toilet, “They can hold them there as long as
they want, there’s no fixed time,” she said.[130]Helen Berhane, the gospel singer,
was held with up to 24 other women in a shipping container for part of the two
years she spent in detention in Mai Serwa prison, in unbearable heat.[131]

Extrajudicial Killings
and Deaths in Custody

Diaspora websites are full of
long lists of “disappeared” individuals, some of whom are believed
to have died or been extrajudicially killed in government custody.[132]The accounts of those who have
fled the country or escaped from detention are replete with descriptions of
people shot whilst trying to escape from national service or whilst trying to
cross the border and others who have died in custody from the terrible
conditions.[133]

Shot while trying to escape

Dozens of refugees who had
escaped from prison or from military service described being shot at without
warning while fleeing.[134] In many of these cases the prisoners were clearly
unarmed and posed little or no threat to their guards. One man interviewed by
Human Rights Watch described how he and his fellow inmates in a container in
Sawa camp escaped: “We ran in all directions. After you jump the wall
there is barbed wire, more than six feet high. I pulled the wire apart and some
soldiers opened fire. I saw three people shot, two on the left and one on the
right. I could not help them because the situation does not allow you to help
your friend.”[135]

One witness saw two men shot
dead trying to escape from Me’eter prison in 2006.[136]Another escaped when all of the
people in his work gang decided to run from their armed guards at the same
time. “We used to go out to work, loading and unloading grain and other
goods, salt, sugar... We broke out of prison when we went out for work. We
figured we might get shot at but some would escape.”[137]

Shot for trying to flee Eritrea

Human Rights Watch were told
by a number of sources that there is an official “shoot-to-kill”
policy in operation against all those trying to cross the border. A former
officer in exile told Human Rights Watch that such an order was in effect:
“Now the law is killing people for crossing the border. The law changed
one year ago.”[138] Another more senior officer, specified: “There
was a circular. There has been such a large number of people [crossing] that
there was an announcement that anyone who crosses the border will be shot.
Whoever tries to cross will be killed immediately and repeat offenders are also
killed... those who escape again and again will be shot [even if they are not
trying to cross borders]. This was issued by the Ministry of Defense in April
200[7].”[139]

A former intelligence officer
described to Human Rights Watch the execution of two men, a soldier and a
university student, who he stated were detained and then shot at Alla 17 prison
for intending to flee the country.[140]

Deaths in custody

Survivors told Human Rights
Watch that many people died in custody from sickness, heat stroke, or from
beatings. According to Reporters sans frontières, three of the
journalists arrested in the crackdown in 2001 died in custody between 2005 and
2006, a fourth died in January 2007.[141]

The survivors of Dahlak
consider themselves to be lucky. As one former inmate said, “In Dahlak,
every day someone died. The food was very little and there was no medical
attention. No one cares for prisoners. While I was there about 25 percent died
from lack of medication and the bad conditions.”[142]

Another man imprisoned in
Dahlak said, “People were dying and getting sick and crazy. My group was
detained the longest but there were others there who had been returned from
Malta, Libya. In 2005 many prisoners were dying because of the heat and
overcrowding, so they transferred some of us to Gedem. It was the hot season
and we were dying of hunger, plus the brutal beating of the guards was causing
many people to die. There were 10 dead in my block.”[143]

In Addenafas prison, near
Assab, one witness told of two inmates who died in a cell holding 13
Christians. Two of them became ill but “there were no medical facilities
and the nutrition was bad. This was 2006, the deaths.”[144]

At the military camp in
Me’eter, “the sleeping was better but there was another problem
because we were forced to urinate in corner of the cell, where we were
sleeping. Many people got cholera, two in my cell died.”[145] And in the container in Sawa camp, “there are
20 people in a container, it is very hot. One died of heat, one died of
sickness in my container.”[146]

In one military camp, Prima,
an inmate was detained alongside three people accused of co-operating with the
Democracy Movement of Eritrea (DemHaE )[147]who he described as dying as a
result of torture in custody: Asmourom Kifle, Tama Kefelay, and Awat Habtezgee.
He described seeing Awat, “bleeding from the nose and mouth. Every time
they were being hit and finally they died. I was listening to the sound but I
didn’t see it... It was hard hitting with a stick or wire on the head and
everywhere. They sent Awat to the hospital and he died there.”[148]

A sergeant who had fled to
Djibouti and formerly had responsibility for supervising a prison, told Human
Rights Watch, “They don’t inform families directly or indirectly if
a soldier dies in prison. It doesn’t matter if the death is from disease
or hitting, [the soldier is] still a “martyr.” No investigation is
made, or questions asked.”[149]

Indefinite Forced
Conscription

Enforced indefinite national
service is an increasingly important element of Eritrea’s human rights
crisis. Conscripts undergo military training, in itself not illegal. However,
they are subjected to cruel military punishments and torture, already described
above. Many may be deployed in what constitutes illegal forced labor. Those who
try and evade national service are treated cruelly. Evaders are detained in
terrible conditions, and heavy penalties are imposed on the families of those
who evade service or flee the country.

Eritrea’s success in
its 30-year armed struggle for independence from Ethiopia was due in some
measure to extraordinary discipline on the part of the Eritrean People’s
Liberation Front (EPLF) and the effective mobilization of the whole adult
population in the service of the liberation war effort.[150] Since the border war with Ethiopia ended in 2000,
however, increasing numbers of Eritreans—especially youth—voice
frustration with the continuing military mobilization and the fact that the
democratic transition has been shelved, along with the population’s human
rights.

An officer who fled the
country told Human Rights Watch: “In the first war the Eritrean people
were coming by themselves [volunteering] to the army and the hope then was to
return quickly to civilian life. Then the Ethiopian offensive into Eritrea made
all the Eritrean people rise up. But now the reality has changed... Everyone is
in national service.”[151]One young man who had recently
fled Eritrea told Human Right Watch, “It’s okay to do national
service, it’s fair to serve one’s country but not always.
It’s not fair when it’s indefinite.”[152]

After peace in 1991 and
independence in 1993, the new government formalized its commitment to national
service in a 1995 proclamation.[153]According to that proclamation,
the objectives of national service are:

The establishment of a
strong defence force based on the people to ensure a free and sovereign
Eritrea;

To preserve and entrust
future generations [with] the courage, resoluteness [and] heroic episodes shown
by our people in the past thirty years;

Create a new generation
characterized by love of work, discipline, ready to participate and serve in
the reconstruction of the nation;

To develop and enforce the
economy of the nation by investing in development work our people as a potential
wealth;

To develop professional
capacity and physical fitness by giving regular military training and
continuous practice to participants in Training Centers;

To foster national unity
among our people by eliminating sub-national feelings.[154]

The law states that all
Eritrean citizens, men and women between the ages of 18 and 50, have the
obligation to perform national service. In normal circumstances, national
service is supposed to last 18 months (article 8). This consists of six months
military training and 12 months deployment either on military duties or some
other national development project. However, article 13 (2) states that even
after completing the compulsory 18 months, national service can be extended
until 50 years of age “under mobilization or emergency situation
directives given by the government.”[155]

During the first four rounds
of the national service, those who were called up were demobilized after 18
months, but after war broke out with Ethiopia in 1998, everything changed.
Former fighters were called up again, reservists who had been demobilized were
conscripted, and all national service recruits were retained under emergency
directives.

Although the war with
Ethiopia ended in 2000, in May 2002 the government introduced the Warsai Yekalo
Development Campaign (WYDC), a proclamation that indefinitely extended national
service. The government had promised to demobilize thousands of conscripts
after the war, and did demobilize some, but by 2007 it reportedly suspended the
demobilization program.[156]The WYDC was a national effort in
which the generation that had fought for independence would join with new
recruits to build the nation. In effect, it meant the forced conscription of
every adult male up to the age of 50, although some refugees claim 55 is now
the upper limit, with other sources claiming up to 57 for men and 47 for women.[157]

Not all national service is
military service, since many conscripts are not deployed in the army but on
civilian development projects, or are assigned to commercial enterprises with
their salary paid to the Ministry of Defense.[158] However, the Ministry of Defense is in control of the
national service program and if someone working on a construction project were
to abscond they are still be regarded as a deserter under military law.[159]

Refugees interviewed by Human
Rights Watch emphasized that there was no difference between military and
civilian national service—conscripts are equally at the mercy of the
state.[160] One Eritrean academic notes that, “What people
do not realise is that in Eritrea, there is no military service. There is only Hagerawi
Agelglot (National Service) which is much more ambitious and broader than
common Military Service.”[161] Military duties are only one of a number of different
assignments that conscripts can be tasked with, although it is the most common.

At the time of writing, most
of the able-bodied adult population is on active, indefinite, compulsory
national service or on reserve duty. The only exceptions are on health grounds,
or, for women, pregnancy.[162] In discussions with visiting members of the European
Parliament, Eritrean government officials, “admitted that military
service, although formally to last 18 months, often extends over decades,
reducing both the active workforce and the individual freedom and choices of
the citizens.”[163]

Eritrea has also used its
conscription policy to harass and detain UN and NGO staff, purportedly on the
grounds that they have not fulfilled their national service obligations.[164] In 2005, seven Eritrean UNMEE staff were under arrest[165] and the number rose to 27 in early 2006,[166] some of whom were later released.[167]

For a country to enforce
conscription laws may not be a violation of human rights. However, the way this
is done in Eritrea—the violent methods used, the lack of any right to
conscientious objection, and the lack of any mechanism to enable a challenge to
the arbitrary enforcement of conscription constitutes abuse. Furthermore,
although national service and conscription at times of genuine national
emergency may be permitted as a limited exception to the prohibition on forced
labor, the indefinite nature of national service in Eritrea, the threat of
penalty (and collective punishment of families of those who desert), the use of
recruits for forced labor, and the abuses associated with punishing those who
do not participate violate Eritreans’ basic human rights, various
provisions of the Eritrean constitution, and international human rights law.[168]

The consequences for Eritrea
are disastrous in that the more the government seeks to compel the population,
the more people flee the country. Eritrea is now in the grip of a refugee
crisis with thousands of people fleeing or attempting to flee every month (see
below, “The Experience of Refugees.”)[169] And since everyone must serve, no family in Eritrea
is unaffected by the consequences of the national service policy.

Collective punishment
of deserters’ families

There are strict penalties
for those who try and escape national service as well as for any Eritreans who
leave the country without government authorization. Families are collectively
punished if their relatives flee national service, usually by being jailed or
forced to pay fines. An officer formerly responsible for chasing down deserters
explained how if the soldier could not be found then the family was arbitrarily
detained instead:

If one of the men escapes,
you have to go to his home and find him. If you don’t find him you have
to capture his family and take them to prison. Since 1998, it’s standard
to collect a family member if someone flees. The Administration gives the order
to take family members if the national service member is not around. If you
disappear inside Eritrea then the family is put in prison for some time and
often then the child will return. If you cross the border, then [your family]
pays 50,000 Nakfa [about US$3,050]. If there’s no money then it can be a
long time in prison. I know people who are in prison for six months.[170]

All of the deserters
interviewed by Human Rights Watch were fearful for the safety of their families
and anxious that they would face the crippling 50,000 Nakfa fines, detention,
or some other retribution such as the denial of business permits or the
forfeiting of land in lieu of a cash fine.[171]Three former conscripts said their
mothers had been imprisoned for four months, two months, and two weeks
respectively because they could not afford to pay the 50,000 Nakfa fine.[172] One man, now in Italy, heard that his family’s
farm had been taken because he had fled the army:

All the families of those
who fled had to pay 50,000 or have their land taken away. This happened to a
lot of people I knew. About half of the town suffered this. The area is usually
a vegetable-growing area—tomatoes and spinach. When people lose their
land they depend on God. If they pay 50,000 they get their land back. The memehidar
[local administration] of the town demands the land. Sometimes security
officials also take matters into their own hands.[173]

Abuse of female
conscripts

Refugees told Human Rights
Watch that women are conscripted less now than previously.[174]However, those who are recruited
are more at risk of rights violations, rape, and sexual harassment in
particular. As one female recruit who served as a conscript for 10 years
explained, “First you do your military training then they hold you
forever without your rights. The military leaders can ask you for anything and
if you refuse their demands then you can be punished. Almost every woman in the
military experiences this kind of problem.”[175] When she was approached by a commanding officer he
punished her when she refused his advances:

The officer who asked me
[for sex] was married. I said, ‘You are married,’ and he gave me
military punishment and made me work without any break. I was tied in otto
for three hours in the sun... this disturbed my mind. He was the commander of
100 [a company]. His official rank is marehai. After he untied me he
asked, ‘Do you know this is your fault?’ I said, ‘This is not
my fault.’ That’s when he made me work.[176]

No right of conscientious objection

The National Service
Proclamation of 1995 makes no provision for conscientious objection to military
service. Exemptions are provided for disability (article 15), and those
considered unfit for military training must serve “in any public and
government organ according to their profession.”[177] But in reality, as one Eritrean refugee said,
“the only people who don’t go to military service are blind or
missing their trigger fingers.”[178]

Human Rights Watch takes no
position on conscription; indeed in many countries it is legal and
well-regulated. However, the right of conscientious objection to military
service has become an established international norm—a legitimate
exercise of the right of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, as laid
down in article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 18
of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.[179] It is possible, acceptable, and, in most other
countries, normal, for individuals to undertake non-military forms of national
service, such as community work, construction, or service in the health and
education sectors. Many national service conscripts go on to do this kind of
service in Eritrea, however their national service begins with a mandatory six
months military training.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are
particularly affected by the lack of a right to conscientious objection because
their faith forbids them to bear arms. Since independence adherents of this
faith have been systematically persecuted for what the authorities have treated
as their questionable commitment to the national struggle.[180]

Some unlucky youths are
viewed by the government as, literally, born to fight. During the war for
independence, children born to EPLF fighters were given over to the movement to
be raised in communal crèches while the parents fought in the army.
These children, called “red flowers” or keyahti embaba in
Tigrinya, are not only expected to participate in national service, but are
apparently given no choice but to join the military in their parents’
footsteps. One man born during the struggle fled Eritrea because he had no
future there except as a soldier: “The government says that the children
of yekalo [independence fighters] must join the military; they have to
follow their fathers.... I told them I don’t want to be a soldier. They
told me I must be because my parents died in the war.”[181]

“Psychological
derangement” (article 14, 5.1) is also a ground for exemption from
military service, and this appears to be a popular way to try and evade
service. Recruits who have recently been in Sawa describe a dramatic increase
in the number of people in the camp showing signs of severe mental illness.
Recruits describe a new disease that has sprung up among young women drafted
into Sawa and Wi’a training camps, called “lewt,” and
only known in the camps. One male draftee explained: “In every cohort at
least 10 girls die. The girls cannot handle the pressure and the punishment.
The symptoms are a bent back, walking backwards, and some of them shake and
fall down. They become like zombies, they just stare at you.”[182]But as one said, “I’m
not sure if they are genuinely crazy or if they are just pretending to be crazy
in order to be demobilized.”[183]

“Giffa”:
press-ganging conscripts

Conscription is generally
managed by local councils, the smallest units of local administration,
sometimes referred to as kebelle, sometimes as memehidar, a
general word meaning “administration.” These council officials
maintain detailed records on the individual families in their area and ensure
that those of age are conscripted. But in larger towns, the police or military
also try to capture evaders or deserters through ad hoc round-ups. Round-ups of
the population in towns and villages—known as giffa in
Tigrinya— are common and constitute a kind of modern press-ganging.
Anyone of age found without the relevant documents exempting them from national
service is taken to the military camps of Sawa and Wi’a for training.[184]

Even aside from evaders and
deserters, any civilian who forgets their identification or travel documents is
at particular risk of being rounded up in a giffa and arbitrarily
detained. As a young student who was put in Adi Abeto prison for 22 days
described: “It was a Saturday and I was having coffee with friends. The
police came and asked for papers, I said I would return to Mai Nehfi to get
them but instead they took me to prison.”[185]

Human Rights Watch spoke to
many men who had been apprehended by police or military through giffas.[186]A man who was conscripted in 1998
said he had asked dozens of times to be demobilized. “I have not seen the
situation change for 10 years. I asked to leave the military but they tell you,
‘we are at war, you cannot leave.’”[187] He did not return after a scheduled vacation but was
caught in a giffa and jailed in Aderser prison.

One young man had absconded
from training at Sawa camp but was picked up again during a giffa in Adi
Keyh town during 2007:

I remember the day because
it was a Saturday, a market day. The soldiers surrounded the town the evening
before and on Saturday people came to the market for shopping, around 11 a.m.
Many people were caught. They ask you for ID card. I tried to escape but
because of the crowd I couldn’t get away. They beat me and put me in a
military vehicle. Soldiers don’t have any education, they have no
respect, they simply take you away. We waited an hour or so in the truck while
the soldiers were catching other people. People were crying.

After an hour or two we were
taken to Track B [prison] in Asmara. We spent one day there without food except
for a single biscuit. Then [we were] taken to Sawa, about 320 of us, almost all
men except two or three women. In Sawa, men and women were divided, we were
made to kneel down when we got out of the bus, you do it otherwise you will
have the stick.[188]

Conscription from
school

The preferred method of the Eritrean government is to conscript students
into national service straight from school, unless they are continuing higher
education. To this end, the final year of secondary school was moved to Sawa
military camp in 2003. This 12th grade takes place only in Sawa,
under military authority, and incorporating military training. Although many 12th
grade students are 18 years old, or less, some are older because they take
longer to finish high school.[189] Each round or intake of students incorporates 8,000
to 9,000 students.[190]

Once they are in the camp,
however, military service effectively starts then and there. A teacher whose
national service involved teaching in Sawa told Human Rights Watch, “The
students could not study. They were always being forced to leave the class for
some kind of military service.”[191] A former student said he did not even enter 12th
grade but was ordered straight into national service in July 2007 even though
he was less than 18 years old.[192]

National service is deeply
unpopular, especially because new recruits know that there is no prospect of it
ending. Students have started escaping from Sawa camp during their 12th
grade year without completing school.[193] Escape is no mean feat, because, as described above,
Sawa is in effect a huge prison. Those who made it described braving machine
gun fire, barbed wire fences, and several days of walking through the desert
without food and water.[194]

Some students, aware of their
fate once they reach 12th grade have begun to deliberately fail
classes so that they can remain in the lower grades.[195] Government awareness of this practice has been to
simply pull anyone of military age—18 and above—out of school
altogether, even though it is normal for some students to take extra years to
finish school because they are poor or work on family farms. Several students
described being taken to a military camp under false pretences.[196] One of them explained:

I was a student in Adi Keyh
in 10th grade. The government told me I was overage and I was forced
to leave the school in January 2006. They took 200 of us on a bus to
Wi’a, telling us that we would continue our education there. They took
everyone from all schools, not just those in secondary school but also those
from junior and elementary school, everyone above 19 years. But in fact it was
military training. The director of the school had told us that we would be
going to school in Wi’a. We were surprised, we did not believe that we
would be schooling in Wi’a, in the hot desert. When we got there to the
camp, everyone was sad. It was very hot, people were dying from the sun, we
buried about five. After four months I was deployed near Assab, a place called
Klima. It was very hot too and people were dying there. I was given a vacation
and then I escaped.[197]

Wi’a is reportedly the
camp where the “not so clever” students go. If it appears that a
student will not graduate high school anyway, then the government will send him
to Wi’a even before he has finished. One former student who was sent to
Sawa explained, “In school, if you are absent more than two weeks, you
get sent to Wi’a—for whatever reason. Sawa is supposed to be for
educated people. If you get kicked out of school, you are not fit for education
anyway, so you go to Wi’a.”[198]

Forced Labor

After six months of
compulsory military training, national service conscripts are deployed
indefinitely in one of several possible activities. Many conscripts are simply
drafted into military service and are deployed in regular military units.[199]One refugee interviewed by Human
Rights Watch was sent to work as a clerk in a court in Asmara, another was sent
to work as a mechanic in a civilian garage repairing trucks in Asmara.[200] Others described working on farms or mines owned by
the state or the PFDJ ruling party, or building roads and bridges. Regular
military units, conscripted military personnel, and prisoners are all also
engaged in similar activities—building, mining, and farming.[201]

According to escaped
conscripts, the normal “allowance” during training is 50 Eritrean
Nakfa per month (about US$3).[202] After 18 months training while on national service,
this is increased to 150 Nakfa a month ($9).[203]This is the same amount paid to
former soldiers recalled for service during the 1998-2000 war and still
mobilized as well as for the over-50s who have been mobilized to serve in a
reserve militia. Some of those conscripted prior to 1998 appear to have been
incorporated into the regular army and receive salaries accordingly. Regular
soldiers are paid a salary of 330 to 3,000 Nakfa ($20 to $183) depending on
rank.[204]

All walks of life have been
transformed into national service, so that, in essence, an Eritrean is
conscripted, subjected to military training for six months, then assigned to
any job by the state. As one young man said, “The government is trying to
do every single business in the country. National service people are employed
in government enterprises, and every person below 40 is a member of national
service. So if I’m assigned to work in a shop, then I’ll be working
in a shop and serving my country.”[205]

In another example, a
professional footballer was told to report for national service. When he
finished six months of military training he was assigned to play football
again, but as part of his national service. Before military training he was
earning 3,600 Nakfa a month ($220). Afterwards, as part of national service, he
was paid an allowance of 400 Nakfa a month ($24).[206] He said, “I kept playing because if I
didn’t I would have been taken to the military again.”[207]

For regular recruits on
national service, 150 Nakfa does not constitute a living wage, nor is their
labor given freely. Refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch refused to refer
to the money they were paid as a salary, preferring instead to call it
“pocket money.”[208] All complained that it was insufficient to live on
and completely inadequate to feed a family. Western diplomats and UN officials
confirmed that making ends meet on such amounts was impossible in Eritrea.[209] Nevertheless, an official with an agency that
provides significant development assistance to Eritrea argued that national
service labor is not necessarily forced labor, but “mobilizing people in
a low wage environment.”[210]

Under international
law—the Forced Labour Conventions and ILO Convention 29—the key
points when considering the definition of forced labor are the extent to which:
“(i) the works or services are exacted involuntarily; (ii) the exaction
of labor or services takes place under the menace of penalty; and (iii) these
are used as a means of political coercion, education or as a method of
mobilising and using labor for purposes of economic development, as well as
means of labor discipline.”[211]This is most certainly the case in
Eritrea, and it would thus appear that forced labor on the Eritrean scale and
for indefinite periods is a gross human rights violation.[212]

Human Rights Watch spoke to
dozens of men and one woman who described being forced to do back-breaking work
and who were punished when they refused.[213] One man conscripted at the age of 16 in 1996
described doing many different jobs in the military until he fled at the
beginning of 2008. After the 1998-2000 war, “when the fighting stopped I
did different jobs in the army, planting, agriculture... after that we were
collecting stones to build the Asmara-Assab road.”[214]

Another conscript finished
his training at Sawa camp and was then deployed in Dekemhare on a construction
site building houses for military leaders: “We were paid very little,
whereas as a civilian builder you can earn. Some other soldiers refused to work
and were jailed. If you don’t work you go to prison. You lose your
vacation time and your pay—150 Nakfa—is stopped. If you refuse they
see it as a political problem.”[215]

In its report of a mission to
Eritrea, the European Parliament noted, “Via the ‘Cash for Work
Programme,’ citizens contribute to the public works—such as the
building of dams—against payments from the government. While this scheme
was described as being voluntary, there is a risk of people being forced to
work for the government in order to ensure they can earn their living.”[216] Most conscripts don’t openly refuse to work but
they vote with their feet, either escaping from the military camps or waiting
until their annual leave and then fleeing the country instead of reporting for
duty once more.

Forced labor for
private gain

The projects on which
conscripts are deployed are not just public works for the national good. They
are often sent to work on private construction projects, building houses for
military leaders, and working on private farms. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International have both previously documented the use of conscript labor for
the benefit of ranking members of the military and the government.[217]

Diplomats admitted that aid
projects are implemented by national service labor working for private
construction firms with good connections to the government.[218] “All companies are owned by the military or the
party,” said one diplomat, and another complained that aid projects,
“are meant to be allocated through an open bidding process, but in
reality only those using conscript labor stand a chance.”[219] Several scholars concurred with this analysis.[220]As one wrote:

Since April 2006, only PFDJ
construction firms are allowed to engage in construction activities after
private firms and individual entrepreneurs were banned from the construction
industry as part of the government’s crackdown on the private sector. On
3 April 2006, the government issued a directive ordering all
“contractors, consultants, practicing professionals and studio
operators” to submit to the Technical Office of the Central Region: their
original licenses, detailed accounts, addresses, types and sizes of their
projects, owners’ names, estimated total costs, on the day after (4 April
2006) the directive was issued. On 7 April 2006, the government also ordered
all of them to cease their activities within ten days. The prohibition is still
in force. The major beneficiaries of the ban are the ruling party’s more
than forty enterprises which dominate every aspect of the country’s
economy, the enterprises of the PFDJ’s mass organizations and the
mushrooming construction firms belonging to the Ministry of Defence.[221]

One former EPLF fighter who
was in the military administration told Human Rights Watch, “the senior
officers have their own capital like shops, bars; they run businesses and the
workers are the national service. The conscripts are working for the benefit of
the higher ranks: Colonel, Brigadier, Major-General.”[222] A scholar who has conducted research in Eritrea over
many years noted, “there is a whole class of people whose wealth rests on
National Service labor.”[223]

Dozens of former prisoners
who had escaped and fled the country described being put to work on military
construction projects; some built military installations such as barracks and
ports, others built properties owned by military leaders.[224] The conscripts deployed to work on commercial farms,
mines, or construction projects were often housed in appalling conditions with
bad nutrition and minimal pay. One national service soldier who had requested
to be demobilized many times since independence in 1993 was deployed in a mine
for two months. He explained:

Bad things happened. I had
to do work on the houses of the leadership, had to collect sand crystals [some
kind of crystalline sand], inside the earth. You use a stick to push the earth...The
crystal sand is sharp and when you dig it out of the soil it creates infection
in the fingers. When I complained that the fingers were injured they said,
‘you have to take punishment for that.’ At one point when I was
tired and my fingers were bleeding I stood up and said I couldn’t do
more. They asked why I was standing, and took me away. After beating me they
asked me ‘Why don’t you work?’ I said, I came here
accidentally because I didn’t have my ID card and I can’t do more
work because my fingers are injured. At last when I said I had been a fighter,
[in the liberation war] they stopped the punishment.[225]

It is not just conscripts who
are providing cheap labor for the benefit of military leaders. Prisoners are
regularly employed and school children are made to work during their school
holidays. The national program for school children is called Mahtot. For
two months during the break, children in 9th grade and above must
report to work camps where they, “plant trees, clean houses, pick cotton
and help with other agricultural projects,” in the words of one student.[226]Normally the children stay in
schools in the area. During the two months their compensation is 150 Nakfa ($9)
for their family; the fee is euphemistically called “soap money.”[227]

Restrictions on the Freedoms of Expression,
Conscience, and Movement

Freedom of expression

Since 2001 Eritrea has been
in the grip of a media blackout. All independent newspapers, radio, and
television outlets have been shut down. Eritrea is the only country in Africa
without an independent media outlet. Many journalists were arrested as part of
a general clampdown on dissent in September 2001. Since then, many others have
been arbitrarily arrested and detained, the whereabouts of most are unknown and
Reporters sans frontières (RSF) believes that at least four have died in
custody.[228]The Committee to Protect
Journalists believes that as many as 14 journalists and editors are held
incommunicado in secret locations; Eritrea is one of four countries in the
world which together account for three quarters of all journalists in
detention.[229] In its 2008 press freedom index RSF ranked Eritrea
last, 173rd, behind North Korea, Turkmenistan, Burma, Cuba, Vietnam,
China, and Iran.[230]

In 2006 and 2007, even
journalists who worked for the state-run media agency were arrested and
detained because some of their colleagues had decided to flee the country
rather than continue working for the government.[231]They were suspected of wishing to
flee themselves. Paulos Kidane, a popular figure on state television, was among
those arrested in 2006. He was detained again in 2007 after he had escaped from
jail and was trying to cross the border. He was reportedly arrested at the
border and his family was subsequently informed by the authorities that he had
“died accidentally.”[232]

In February 2009 RSF reported
a new crackdown in which the entire staff of Radio Bana, which produces
educational programs for the Ministry of Education, was arrested. Although most
were released, a few staff remain in custody.[233]

One journalist who had fled
the country told Human Rights Watch how he was arrested and sent to Dahlak
prison, then later made to work for the military and after that the state
television agency. He fled in 2007, and said, “I was a toy for the
government.”[234]

One of the few permanent
foreign journalists in Eritrea, the BBC’s Jonah Fisher, was expelled in
2004 following a broadcast on Amnesty International’s last report on
human rights conditions in the country.[235]In an interview with Fisher,
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said, “What is free press? There is no
free press anywhere.”[236] A freelance successor, Peter Martell, was also thrown
out in March 2008 after he refused to disclose to the government the names of
his sources for a report on veterans’ disillusionment with the
government.[237]

In 1996 the Eritrean
government passed a law governing the press which both guarantees press freedom
and also provides for censorship if “the country, or part of it, is faced
with a danger threatening public order, security and general peace caused by
war, armed rebellion or public disorder or where a natural disaster
ensues.”[238]The government has used the
standoff with Ethiopia over the border issue as a catch-all justification for
restrictions of rights and freedoms in all areas of freedom of expression.

It is not only the press that
has been the subject of restrictions on free speech. Soldiers within the
military told how they were detained and tortured for questioning the policies
of the government in regimental meetings. One man was imprisoned indefinitely
for denouncing the government in a military meeting: “In 2001 I told an
assembly in the military that the government was illegal. I was sent to prison
in Alla for two years. After two years there they transferred me to
Dahlak.”[239]

Dozens of former conscripts
told Human Rights Watch how they were detained for asking questions about the
fate of political prisoners or expressing concern about the policy of
indefinite military service.[240]

Teachers and university
students who asked questions about the curriculum or who questioned why the
authorities were withholding their graduation certificates also faced torture
and jail. “Seventy to 80 percent of university students are trying to
leave because they feel politically marginalized and they can’t speak
freely. If you do they kill or imprison you,” said one teacher, a
graduate of Mai Nehfi technical institute.[241]When he questioned the curriculum
that he was asked to teach secondary school children in 12th grade
in Sawa camp, he was warned by the head of the camp: “You are a teacher.
We taught you. You are in the university because we helped you. Now you try to
go against our curriculum. If you go on you will be in prison, even you will be
killed.”[242] He told Human Rights Watch that the director of Sawa
himself, the man in charge of administration for the camp, had made these
threats.

In 2007 graduates of Mai
Nehfi institute organized a petition calling on the Ministry of Education to
issue graduates their degree certificates and for the college to be
internationally recognized as the University of Asmara had been. The Ministry
withholds certificates as an incentive for graduates to remain in the country,
and refuses to give Mai Nehfi international status for the same reason. Eight
hundred students reportedly signed the petition.[243]

One man who was among 50
teachers that presented the petition to Dr. Debrabrehane, administrator of Mai
Nehfi college, in early 2007 was arrested by the military in the middle of the
night, three days later. He spent five months in a military prison:

[There were] no questions
just beating...they used to be beat me in the jail, morning and evening, like
meals... They were telling us that we are traitors, that we are not ready to
help and train the youth throughout the country. They insulted us and told us
we were not educated. My family did not know where I was.... I later heard that
four or five days later my mum was imprisoned for two weeks, in a civilian
prison in Asmara. They asked her for 50,000 Nakfa because she had before signed
my wahis [guarantor of good conduct] while I was a teacher. If I make
any mistake then she will answer for my conduct.[244]

In December 2008, an Eritrean
diaspora website reported that intelligence officers had raided an internet
café in Asmara and arrested youth for accessing opposition websites. The
article also said that government officials had summoned internet service
providers and warned them not to allow customers to access such websites.[245]

Restrictions on
religious freedom

In 2002, in a widely
documented crackdown, the Eritrean government banned unregistered religious
activity, essentially making it illegal for anyone to practice worship of any
but four recognized faiths (Catholic, Lutheran, Eritrean Orthodox, and Islam).[246]The unrecognized churches were
required to register with a new Department of Religious Affairs, and several
reportedly attempted to do so but no registration permits have been authorized.[247]Since then, Evangelical and
Pentecostal Christians have continued to be the object of repression and
security forces have broken into homes and churches, rounded people up,
detained, and tortured them. Admitting to being a Pentecostal Christian or
being caught in possession of a Bible is enough to land oneself in jail, be
subjected to torture, or denied the right to travel abroad.[248] In 2004, the United States designated Eritrea a
country of particular concern because of its repression of freedom of religion.[249]

As mentioned above,
Jehovah’s Witnesses have been singled out as a target for repression.
After failing to vote in the 1993 referendum on independence and refusing to
bear arms during national service they were in effect stripped of their
citizenship.[250]Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot
access public services or obtain official ID cards or commercial licenses.[251]

Human Rights Watch
interviewed 13 Evangelical Christian refugees, all of whom had been
imprisoned—and some tortured—for their faith. Evangelical
Christians wishing to practice their faith must do so clandestinely. Even then
they are not safe from government abuse. Several Christians described holding prayer
meetings in private houses during 2006 and 2007 in Asmara, Tesseny, and Senafe.
Police or military, possibly acting on information given by informers,
disrupted the meetings and arrested those present.[252] One elderly woman who has been a Pentecostal Christian
for over 40 years said that because of the threat of informers she has taken to
praying with different people, in different places, and different times.[253]

Helen Berhane, a well-known
gospel singer, has described publicly several times how she was tortured to
renounce her faith while in detention.[254] While holding a Bible-study class for other youth in
a secret church outside Asmara, she was arrested and sent to Mai Serwa military
prison where she was tortured, beaten, and held in a metal shipping container
for over two years.[255] Her experience was typical of many others who have
been routinely rounded up since 2002.[256]

According to Christian
Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) by June 2007 over 2,000 Christians were in detention
in Eritrea.[257] In late 2008, CSW reported house to house searches
and a wave of arrests in numerous Eritrean towns, including Asmara. According
to the organization 100 people were arrested in the period leading up to
December 12, 2008, and detained in military facilities, some of them dying in
custody.[258] Compass Direct, a Christian rights organization,
estimated that by late 2008 nearly 3,000 Christians were in detention.[259]Compass Direct reported that three
Christians had died in custody in the latter part of 2008, and that in June
eight others were transferred to medical facilities because they had been
tortured in custody.[260]

Persecution of
religious conscripts

Many of those in detention in
military prisons are there for practicing their faith whilst on national
service. One young Pentecostal man who was arrested while praying with 13
others in Sawa military camp in 2006 told Human Rights Watch that he was locked
up along with 20 others in an underground prison measuring four square meters.
He was let out twice a day to go to the toilet. He said, “The soldiers
told us to quit that religion or else we would be in prison our entire
life.”[261]

A military policeman in Sawa
camp told Human Rights Watch how he was punished for his faith during his
lunch-breaks and then ordered back to work. Previously during training for
national service, “They punished me for being a Pentecostal Christian:
they beat me, handcuffed my hands and feet together, threw water on me... they
burned my Bible,” he said. “Every time they saw me reading it, they
would beat me, punish me. There were so many people there, not just me, for two
weeks, with a policeman guarding you, lying in the sun.”[262]

A young Christian who was
caught praying in Sawa camp was put in jail for one year. He was held with 20
others in an underground cell and let out twice a day to go to the toilet.[263]Dozens of Christian refugees
described similar experiences. One woman who was caught with a Bible was
arrested and tied with her hands and feet tied to opposite limbs behind the
back. Her captors told her, “Jesus will save you now.”[264]

In January 2007 a woman on
national service in Sawa camp was jailed in a shipping container for three
months along with several others for reading the Bible together. She had served
in the military for 10 years. She said that, “When I left prison they
asked me to sign a paper saying ‘We caught you preaching,’ and I
signed it.”[265]

But it is not just
Evangelical Christian worshippers who face restrictions in the military.
Adherents of all faiths face problems. As one female Christian jailed for
reading the Bible in Sawa camp said, “Everyone, even the Orthodox and the
Muslims, are not allowed to worship. Only politics is allowed.”[266] A soldier also claimed that no praying of any kind
was permitted in the military—whether one was a follower of a Christian
faith or Muslim.[267]

Freedom of movement

The Eritrean
government’s oppressive behavior and compulsory national service has
spawned other restrictions and human rights violations. Severe restrictions on
freedom of movement are in place. As more and more of its citizens leave the
country, the government’s methods to try and stem the exodus have become
more brutal. As described above, a “shoot-to-kill” policy applied
to anyone crossing the border without permission is clearly intended to deter
movement outside the country. Within Eritrea, movement is equally circumscribed
through a variety of mechanisms.

Local government authorities
at the village or neighborhood level maintain detailed records of local
populations. “They know the exact population, how many children are in
the army and so on.”[268]Each zone is controlled by a
subcommittee drawn from the local population—in essence civilians are
employed to keep an eye on each other.

A visitor to Eritrea in late
2008 described buses being frequently stopped and searched and passengers asked
for ID cards: some possessed laminated cards showing that they had completed
national service, others had letters authorizing travel to a specific place and
for a limited period of time.[269] This echoes the stories told to Human Rights Watch by
individuals who were frequently detained for not possessing the relevant
papers.[270] As one refugee said, “you cannot walk three
hours without being asked for a permit.”[271]All roads in and out of Asmara and
the major cities have checkpoints where military stop and check the documents
of passengers.[272]

Escaping conscripts described
walking around checkpoints in order to avoid detection on their way to the
border.[273] A couple told Human Rights Watch, “we were
moving during the night because to travel without a permit is difficult. During
the day we stayed hidden under trees. We traveled at night because if we were
caught then it would be dangerous, five years in prison or they can kill you,
especially if you are a soldier or a university student.”[274] One woman who escaped told how she was smuggled over
the Sudanese border by a businessman with a permit to travel along the
Tesseney-Asmara road.[275]

Denial of exit visas

Due to the large number of
people fleeing or refusing to return after being allowed to leave, exit visas
are routinely denied for young people who are eligible for national service.
Children from the age of 14 are usually denied exit visas but the US State
Department has reported exit visas refused for children as young as five.[276] One older woman who had managed to travel to visit
her children abroad described the signs in the Foreign Ministry as saying that
only men over the age of 54 and women over 47 are eligible for exit visas, she
said, “only the old can travel.”[277]

Part 3: The Experience of Eritrean Refugees

Eritrea is currently among
the top refugee-producing nations in the world. Fleeing the country is truly a
last resort because the conditions facing refugees abroad are appalling and the
punishments inflicted on asylum seekers who are forcibly returned are terrible,
including torture and death. The Eritrean government considers leaving the
country without a valid exit visa a crime, and absconding from national service
is viewed as tantamount to treason.

Leaving Eritrea is not an
easy undertaking. As described above, heavily patrolled borders, mine-fields,
and a shoot-to-kill policy make escape from Eritrea difficult. Despite this,
thousands of people are leaving the country. The majority of refugees end up in
Ethiopia and Sudan in overcrowded refugee camps. An increasing number try to
make it to Europe via Sudan and Libya. They face difficult conditions crossing
the Sahara and risk detention and extortion at the hands of Libyan and Sudanese
police. Those who elect to take another route to Israel or Egypt run the risk
of being forcibly returned without having their asylum claims assessed, as a
recent 2008 wave of returns from Israel to Egypt and Egypt to Eritrea has
demonstrated (see below).[278] Many others have risked hazardous crossings of the
Red Sea to get to Yemen.[279]

The scale of the Eritrean
outflux is increasing. In 2007 the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
estimated around 600 Eritreans were crossing into Ethiopia every month.[280] In January 2009 the Ethiopian government claimed the
number had grown to 900 a month.[281]In 2007 the UN said that at least
10,000 Eritrean refugees arrived in Sudan and by 2008 this had apparently
increased to at least 13,000 known new arrivals, likely a conservative estimate
given that many of them do not apply for refugee status and remain in Sudan
illegally, in transit for Libya.[282] According to UNHCR, in 2008 more than 3,000 Eritreans
entered Italy, the main entry point for Eritrean asylum-seekers to the European
Union, an increase of 50 percent over the 2,000 Eritreans who arrived in 2007.[283]

Lack of Protection and Forced Return of Refugees

The problems facing those who
decide to flee Eritrea do not end when they cross the border. Indeed, their
problems are only beginning. Despite the terrible human rights record of the
Eritrean government, Eritrean refugees are often forcibly returned without
regard to their rights under international refugee law and in spite of standing
UNCHR guidance that even rejected Eritrean asylum seekers should be provided
with some form of alternative protection instead of being forced to return
home.[284]

Sudan

After more than a decade of
tensions, Eritrea and Sudan normalized diplomatic relations in 2005.[285]The Sudanese government currently
has a functional relationship with Asmara and from time to time has forcibly
returned refugees to Eritrea.

Sudan has hosted hundreds of
thousands of Eritreans over the years, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s
when Sudanese relations with Ethiopia were at their most difficult and Eritreans
fled Ethiopian government attacks.[286] Although thousands of Eritreans returned to Eritrea
voluntarily after independence in 1993, many refugees remained in Sudan,
some—such as former ELF members—because they feared persecution
despite the amnesty extended to individuals.

These refugees were augmented
by new arrivals fleeing the border war with Ethiopia after 1998. In 2002 the
UNHCR invoked the “cessation clause”—the end of refugee
status—for those Eritrean refugees who had fled to Sudan during the
independence struggle and those who had fled the border conflict more recently.
UNHCR facilitated a controversial repatriation of tens of thousands of the
300,000 Eritreans then residing in Sudan.[287]

Over the past five years the
increasingly cordial relations between the Sudanese and Eritrean governments
have resulted in increasing pressure from Sudanese authorities on Eritrean
refugees to return to Eritrea, contrary to the longstanding Sudanese reception
of Eritrean refugees over the previous decades. According to Amnesty
International, some of those returned by Egypt to Eritrea in June 2008 (see
below) had previously fled Sudan because they feared being returned to Eritrea
by the Sudanese authorities.[288]

Currently most refugees who
flee Eritrea to Sudan either settle in refugee camps in eastern Sudan or
transit onward within the country or to other countries in search of a safer
and more stable existence. Those not in camps in Sudan are extremely vulnerable
to abuse, in particular extortion and forcible return by the Sudanese
authorities—Sudanese security services have links to Eritrean security
agents. One woman who escaped to Libya and then Italy had been detained in
Sudan in 2004 when she was caught without papers; she described house-to-house
round-ups in Khartoum by Sudanese police.[289]

In Sudan, there are nearly
100,000 Eritreans living in open camps at Kassala, al-Gedaref, Gezira, and
Sinar. About 30,000 are said to live in towns in these areas and at least
another 30,000 or more are estimated to be living in Khartoum.[290] At least 10,000 new arrivals arrived during 2007.[291] According to a Sudanese official, 13,000 Eritreans
arrived in Sudan in 2008. The government says it cannot cope and has asked the
UN for help.[292]

Even getting to Sudan is
hazardous for Eritreans. Asylum seekers are reportedly robbed and extorted by
criminals near the border, as well as by the Sudanese police.[293]Several refugees who had passed
through Sudan on their way to Italy told Human Rights Watch that they had been
imprisoned upon arrival in Sudan and forced to pay bribes to be released.[294]

Egypt

Egypt has in recent years
become a serial offender when it comes to violating the rights of asylum
seekers.[295]

In June 2008 Egypt returned
to Eritrea up to 1,200 Eritreans who had crossed into Egypt from Sudan. As of
late 2008, at least 740 of those returnees were still imprisoned in Wi’a,
the military detention facility in Eritrea.[296]

In December 2008 and January
2009 the Egyptian authorities deported dozens more Eritreans who had been
detained in the Nakhl detention center in North Sinai and police stations in
the nearby city of al-Arish. Around 100 of the Eritreans detained in Nakhl had
earlier been returned to Egypt by Israel. While detained in Nakhl the Eritreans
were visited and registered by officials from the Eritrean embassy, but UNHCR
was denied access to the facility. Groups of Eritrean men, women, and children
were then deported on several flights from Cairo to Asmara in late December and
early January. At least 74 Eritreans, including 12 women and two children, are
known to have been returned to Eritrea on flights from Cairo on December 19,
23, and 28 and January 6, and 11, and January 18. The true number of people
deported may be higher.[297]

Under international human
rights and refugee law, Egypt is obligated not to return any person to a
country where they face the risk of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, or
persecution and should give migrants an opportunity to seek protection. Under a
1954 memorandum of understanding, Egypt devolved responsibility to UNHCR to
assess refugee claims.[298]To fulfill that mandate, UNHCR
needs access to and information about asylum seekers, however, Egypt has denied
UNHCR access to Eritreans in detention since February 2008. An exception was a
group of 142 who were subsequently granted refugee status after significant
pressure.[299]

UNHCR remains concerned but
has been unable to have an impact on Egyptian policy. A UNHCR spokesman told
Reuters: “We are concerned because there are serious human rights
violations in Eritrea and ... when people are forcibly returned they face
detention for long, long periods of time. Months, if not years. And they face
torture.”[300]

In addition, Eritreans and
other migrants face possible death and mistreatment at the hands of Egyptian
border forces when they try to enter Israel. From July 2007 to October 2008,
Egyptian border forces killed 34 African migrants and refugees attempting to
cross into Israel, including Eritreans.[301]

Israel

Increasing numbers of
Eritreans have arrived in Israel in recent years. Israel has provided many of
the Eritrean asylum seekers who successfully entered the country with renewable
work visas, but does not grant these individuals formal refugee status.
Eritreans are also among the dozens of asylum-seekers who have tried to enter
Israel from Egypt but have been stopped, temporarily detained at the border,
and then forcibly returned to Egypt by the Israeli Defense Forces.[302]Israeli security forces returned
hundreds to Egypt in such fashion during 2008 without assessing their claims
for protection.[303]Some of the Eritreans refused
entry by Israel in 2008 were among those subsequently detained in the Sinai by
Egyptian police and then forcibly deported to Eritrea.[304]

Libya

Libya has a well-documented history of abuses against migrants including
forcefully returning people to Eritrea. Conditions in detention are terrible,
with detainees often subjected to beatings and other abuse and denied access to
medical treatment or to the UNHCR.[305] In one well-publicized incident on August 27, 2004, a
group of 75 Eritreans hijacked the plane returning them to Eritrea, forcing it
to land in Sudan, where 60 of the passengers sought asylum. UNHCR subsequently
recognized all 60 as refugees. The attempt to return them took place following a
mass deportation of 109 Eritreans several weeks previously.[306]

In July 2008, Libya made
plans to return 230 Eritreans, prompting Amnesty International to warn against
their deportation.[307]Amnesty reported that up to 700
Eritreans were being held in Misrata prison and were at risk of deportation. In
late 2008 refugees who had spent time in Misrata before arriving in Italy told
Human Rights Watch researchers of similar numbers of people in detention in
Misrata in appalling conditions.[308]They also said that Libya is
holding hundreds of Eritrean and other asylum seekers in other locations for
extended periods of time.[309]

One such place was a
detention facility at Tripoli airport. An Eritrean detained there in 2007 said
that Libyan police were holding migrants for ransom. He told Human Rights Watch
that after paying US$500, he was dropped by a police car in Tripoli. He had the
telephone number of the policeman and said he had helped secure the release of
other Eritreans in detention by contacting their relatives to arrange bribes,
collecting money wired from Eritrea, and paying off the Libyan police.[310]

Like many others, he had
endured terrible ordeals just to get to Libya from Sudan, only to find that
Libya is even less hospitable to asylum seekers than Sudan. One woman described
her journey to Libya from Sudan:

I walked to Libya after
being dropped in the desert. I saw the bodies of Eritreans and their ID cards
there in the desert—two ladies and a boy who looked Eritrean. It took 24
days to get through the desert. You go in an old model Toyota Land Cruiser and
normally they put gas or benzene in the water so you don’t drink too
much. You get out and walk up the hills when it’s too sandy. There were
armed people in the desert [bandits] asking for money. In Darfur they asked for
one million Sudanese pounds [more than $1,000 at that time].[311]

In Libya she was moved from
place to place by traffickers until she was arrested in Tripoli without an ID
card and was taken to Felah prison. Later she was transferred to Misrata prison.
She continued:

Torture was normal,
slapping, kicking. One woman had her arm broken by the Libyan police... At
Felah we were separated from the men but not at Misrata. All of the women had
problems from the police. The police came at night and chose ladies to violate.
There was no treatment for prisoners, no medical attention. Some went mad, some
had babies in jail; everyone was suffering from allergies.[312]

Eventually she was resettled
in Italy as part of a UNHCR program for women who had been abused in Libyan
jails; she had been in detention for over two years.[313]

Malta

A Mediterranean island on the
periphery of the European Union, Malta is one of the first countries in Europe
reached by migrants from Eritrea who make the trip across Sudan and Libya and then
pay smugglers to take them on the boat voyage.

Malta has a bad record of
abuses against asylum seekers and of returning people to Eritrea, so it is not
a destination of choice for those fleeing repression. In 2002 Malta returned
232 Eritreans who were imprisoned upon their return, and many of them tortured.
In 2004 Amnesty International reported that some of them had died in custody.[314]Former detainees from several
different prisons, including the prison on Dahlak island, told Human Rights
Watch that they had been held, punished, and tortured alongside people who had
been returned from Malta in 2002. They said that the group from Malta was the
biggest group of detainees in Dahlak.[315]

Since 2002 there have been no
reports of Malta returning any other Eritreans. However, according to an aid
official, asylum seekers who arrive in Malta, including Eritreans, are detained
for long periods in sub-standard conditions.[316] The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention visited
Malta in January 2009 and raised concerns about Malta’s automatic
detention of immigrants, including asylum seekers, for long periods without
recourse to a court of law. “We consider that the detention regime
applied to them is not in line with international human rights law,” said
the Working Group’s Chairperson, Manuela Carmena Castrillo.[317]

Italy

In 2008 a record number of
33,000 asylum seekers arrived in Italy, triple the number of arrivals in 2006.[318] This is up from 20,000 in 2007 and 10,000 in 2006.
Many of the new arrivals are from Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. Conflict and
serious abuses in the Horn of Africa are clearly driving increasing numbers of
people to make the long, arduous, and expensive journey to try to reach Europe.
A large proportion of those coming to Italy, just under 20 percent, are from
Eritrea.[319]

Eritrean asylum seekers told
Human Rights Watch they had survived terrifying ordeals involving treks though
the desert with no water, bandits in Darfur, unscrupulous Libyan traffickers
and policemen, detention in Tripoli, and dangerous sea crossings to reach the
Italian island of Lampedusa, off the coast of Sicily, all at a cost of up to
$3,000 each paid to people smugglers.[320]

In Italy, asylum seekers are
registered with UNHCR and the Italian authorities and are fed and housed in government
reception centers or—due to the massive influx—temporarily in
schools and churches while they await the determination of their status. While
they await determination they receive food and shelter. Ninety-nine percent of
all Eritreans are granted the right to remain and work in Italy. A small
percentage of those—around two percent—are granted asylum under the
1951 refugee convention and are given refugee travel documents and can apply
for visas to travel outside Italy. However the vast majority are granted
“humanitarian” or “subsidiary” protection for a finite
period of time, usually one year. The latter do not necessarily receive travel
documents.[321]

Many Eritrean refugees in
Italy complained to Human Rights Watch that once they receive their subsidiary
protection documents, they are forced to leave the temporary reception centers
and many become destitute. They told Human Rights Watch that they had no money,
nowhere to go, and no means of getting any money in the difficult labor market.

Human Rights Watch visited a
makeshift camp in an olive grove housing about a dozen Eritrean men that
offered a stark picture of the plight of some Eritreans in Italy. The men, who
had already received refugee status or subsidiary protection documents, told
how new arrivals were smuggling food out of the reception centers to give to
them. Others were begging in the small seaside towns of southern Sicily, one of
Europe’s poorest regions.[322]They had no shelter and no food
and believed they had no recourse to aid from the Italian state.

Some of the individuals
interviewed by Human Rights Watch wanted to travel to northern
Europe—Sweden, Britain, and Germany. Others hoped simply for a
“helping hand” of some social assistance to get them back on their
feet, while others hoped to study.[323]

Under European law EU
countries (except Denmark) are required to “ensure that beneficiaries of
refugee status [or subsidiary protection]...receive...the necessary social
assistance, as provided to nationals of that Member State.”[324] This is in line with the Refugee Convention which
states that “refugees lawfully staying in their territory [should be
accorded] the same treatment with respect to public relief and assistance as is
accorded to their nationals.”[325]

Other European Union
countries (Germany, the UK, and Sweden)

Despite a relatively positive
record on accepting Eritrean refugees, some European countries have at times
ignored the advice of UNHCR and forcibly returned people to Eritrea whom
Amnesty International and other human rights groups, including Human Rights
Watch, fear to be at risk of persecution and torture.

For example in May 2008,
Germany deported two Eritrean men whom Amnesty now believes are being detained
incommunicado.[326] The UK deported Miskir Sermerab Goitom, a 21-year-old
woman in October 2007; Amnesty believes she is being held in Adi Abeto military
prison and is at risk of torture.[327] Sweden threatened to return an Eritrean asylum seeker
in November 2008 but dropped the action after a request from a representative
of the UN Committee against Torture.[328]

Coercion of Eritreans in Exile

The tragic reality for
Eritreans who flee the country is that once they have escaped, they—and
particularly their families—are still not entirely safe from repressive
actions by the Eritrean government. In a small country with a relatively small
population (4 million), the local administrations in towns and rural areas
usually have a clear idea of who is where. And as described, the government has
made it clear that it considers every Eritrean who leaves the country illegally
to be a traitor to the nation. Once a person leaves the country they are, in
effect, treated as fugitives by the government and if returned are treated as
criminals who will face detention, torture, and sometimes death.

There are a variety of ways
in which the Eritrean government exerts pressure on exiles for both financial
and political reasons. The government expects all Eritreans in the diaspora to
pay a two percent tax on income. While taxing expatriates may be a legitimate
state function, the manner in which the Eritrean government coerces individuals
into paying this income presents serious human rights concerns. If refugees or
other Eritrean expatriates do not pay the two percent tax then the government
typically punishes family members in Eritrea by arbitrarily detaining them,
extorting fines, and denying them the right to do business by revoking licenses
or confiscating land.

The two percent tax is not
only a financial mechanism, however. The government also uses it to consolidate
its control over the diaspora population by denying politically suspect
individuals essential documents such as passports and requiring those who live
in Eritrea to provide ‘clearance’ documents for their relatives who
live abroad—essentially coercion to ensure that their relatives have paid
the two percent expatriate income tax demanded by the government.[329]

The two percent tax

As well as being a unique
method of social control, the expatriate fund-raising operations are a crucial
source of revenue for the Eritrean government. In two months in 2003 the
Eritrean Embassy in London reported US$3.2 million profit resulting from
‘second round distribution of land’ collected and remitted to
Asmara.[330]According to the documents, the
annual income of the Embassy in 2003 was $6.2 million. Of this only $74,282 was
derived from visa fees while the rest is described as ‘Contribution to
draught affected (sic),’ ‘Contribution to Relief
Rehabilitation,’ ‘Contribution to National Defence,’
Contribution for Martyrs Children and Disabled,’ Contribution for
Rehabilitation of ex-fighters,’ ‘Contribution to Recovery
Tax.’[331]Supporting documents showed
payments from Eritreans into a UK bank account held by the Embassy.

During the liberation
struggle, most Eritreans in exile willingly contributed portions of their
income to the EPLF.[332] After independence, the government continued the
practice in the name of national development. It is nominally a voluntary
contribution. However, as many Eritreans living abroad in Europe and North
America explained to Human Rights Watch, payment or non-payment carries
consequences for themselves and crucially, for their families who are still in
Eritrea.[333]

One man living in the UK, a
known critic of the government, said that his family had been denied land that
they had applied for in Eritrea, because of his refusal to pay the tax.
“My mum begged me to pay the two percent, she was crying on the
phone.”[334] Clearance is a process whereby an embassy charges a
fee to certify that Eritreans living abroad have paid their dues and are up to
date with the two percent tax. The accounts of the embassy in London for 2004
to 2005 are peppered with references to two percent as well as
‘clearance’, for which Eritreans must usually pay UK£30
($44).[335] A woman living in Eritrea described how several of
her neighbors had had their business licenses revoked because their children,
residents in the United States, had not paid the two percent and they could not
provide clearance certificates.[336]

Embassies have particular
leverage over many Eritrean immigrants and refugees who do not have travel
documents, and those whose passports require renewing. A refugee living in Rome
had his application for a new passport refused. “When I went back they
said they had sent my passport to Eritrea, [and I would not get it back]. When
I asked why, they said ‘because you are not a good citizen, you do not
pay two percent, you do not complete your national obligations.’”[337]He remains without travel
documents to date. “If you don’t pay they don’t renew your
passport, with no passport, you have no permit to stay in Italy... so directly
or indirectly you are obligated to pay.”[338]

Those individuals granted
asylum under the 1951 Refugee Convention are generally provided with their
travel documents by the host country, but in Italy, for instance, the majority
of Eritrean refugees are granted “humanitarian” or
“subsidiary” protection, a lesser status usually requiring renewal
on an annual basis. This does not automatically provide travel documentation,
and so persons in that category need passports. “Those with humanitarian
protection, they are vulnerable, many of them go back to the embassy to seek
passports...the Eritrean government is a big mafia.”[339]

Even once a refugee makes a
decision to approach the embassy and request official assistance for whatever
reason, the state requires those who have fled the country illegally or
absconded from national service to sign a ‘confession’ admitting to
treason and failing to fulfill one’s national duty.[340]

One former political prisoner
who had fled the country after he had been released from Dahlak jail, is stuck
in Italy with expired documents but refuses to go to the Eritrean embassy,
“If I seek a passport from the Eritrean embassy you have to sign a paper saying
you are a criminal, I don’t want to do that.”[341]Refugees in London spoke of
similar procedures at the London embassy.[342]

Part 4: Eritrea’s Legal Obligations

Eritrean Laws and Constitution

The constitution prepared and
approved by the National Assembly after independence—but never
implemented—was to be the “supreme law of the country” and
“the source of government legitimacy and guarantor for the protection of
the rights, freedoms and dignity of citizens and just administration.”[343]The document contains a listing of
“Fundamental Rights [and] Freedoms” patterned after the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.

The list of fundamental
rights included in the Eritrean constitution is standard: no deprivation of
life or liberty is permitted without due process of law.[344] Torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or
punishment is prohibited.[345] Arrests and detentions must be according to law; no
detentions may extend beyond 48 hours without a court order,[346] and the right to petition for a writ of habeas corpus
is guaranteed.[347]The presumption of innocence
applies and trials must be fair and (normally) public.[348]The constitution recognizes the
right to freedom of expression including freedom of the press and other media.[349]Eritreans are given freedom to
practice religion and also the right to “manifest such practice,”[350]and they have the right to travel within and outside
the country.[351]

The approved constitution
allows limitations on most rights to preserve security and public order but
laws limiting rights may “not negate the essential content of the right
or freedom in question.”[352] The rights to religious freedom and practice may not
be abridged under any circumstances.[353]

The constitution was ratified
in May 1997 by the Constituent Assembly consisting of the interim National
Assembly, members of the six regional assemblies, and diaspora representatives.
The democratic provisions it envisaged have not been realized; multi-party
elections were postponed because of the war against Ethiopia in 1998 and have
not been held since. Other Eritrean laws also safeguard human rights but are in
practice ignored. The Press Proclamation purportedly guarantees freedom of
expression and the freedom of the press,[354]while according to the US State
Department the Eritrean penal code limits pre-charge detention to 30 days.[355]

Eritrea’s International Obligations

In addition to violating the
Eritrean constitution and other laws, the conduct of the Eritrean government
also violates the established norms of international human rights law, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and several international treaties and
conventions signed or ratified by the government of Eritrea, including the
International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African
Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.[356]

Arbitrary arrest, torture,
incommunicado detention and the mistreatment of prisoners in Eritrea are
violations of the ICCPR and the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of
All Prisoners.[357] The government, although signing and ratifying some
human rights treaties, has generally failed to comply with the obligations that
ensue. Eritrea has met few of the reporting requirements arising from its
treaty obligations.[358]

Two formal complaints of a
range of human rights violations by the government—arbitrary arrest and
detention, the right to freedom of expression, and cruel or degrading
punishment—have been made to the African Commission on Human and
Peoples’ Rights, to which Eritrea is a state party. In landmark
decisions, the African Commission decided that Eritrea was in violation of the
African Charter and called for the immediate release of political prisoners.

The first decision involved
the G-15 prisoners. The government of Eritrea participated only to the extent
of challenging the Commission’s jurisdiction on the grounds that the G-15
group had not exhausted Eritrean remedies. The Commission rejected that
argument (as it did in the second decision, below) on the ground that
Eritrea’s remedies were not “accessible, effective, or possible.”[359]

On the merits, the Commission
held that prolonged incommunicado detention is “a form of cruel, inhuman
or degrading punishment and treatment.”[360] Courts must determine whether there is a basis for
holding someone in custody, not the executive, and that holding the G-15
members in secret detention without access to family, lawyers, or courts is a
“blatant violation of their rights to liberty and recourse to fair
trial.”[361]

Although the Eritrean
government said that it would bring them before a court as soon as possible,
the Commission said it had received no substantiation that they were being held
in “appropriate detention facilities.”[362]Finally, the Commission seemed to
accept the complainants’ contention that the 11 had been arrested only
because they criticized the government’s policies, their arrest and
detention therefore interfered with “the 11 persons’ right to free
expression.”[363]The Commission found Eritrea to be
violating Charter Articles 2, 6, 7(1) & 9(2). It urged immediate release
and compensation.

The second African Commission
decision was brought by Article 19, an international nongovernmental
organization monitoring and promoting freedom of expression, on behalf of 18 of
the jailed journalists. In a decision adopted in May 2007,[364] the Commission held that the detentions constituted
numerous violations of the African Charter on Peoples and Human Rights, namely
arbitrary arrest and detention (Article 6), incommunicado detention (Article
7), cruel and degrading punishment (Article 5), and the freedom of the press
(Articles 9).

The Commission called for
release or trial of the prisoners, access to them by families and legal
representatives, compensation for violation of their rights, and for the
lifting of the ban on the private press.[365]

To date the Eritrean
government has refused to implement either judgment.[366]

Eritrea acceded to the
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the
involvement of children in armed conflict on February 16, 2005 and has declared
that 18 is the national minimum age for recruitment into the military.[367]

Forced Labor

National service, as
discussed above, is practiced in many countries. However, the indefinite
extension of national service for all adults, the lack of adequate
remuneration, and the threat of penalty mean that the way national service is
currently practiced by the Eritrean government is a violation of international
law.

Eritrea ratified
the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) and the Abolition of Forced Labour
Convention, 1957 (No. 105) on 22 February 2000.[368]Prohibitions on forced
and compulsory labor are now a norm in customary international human rights
law,[369] as well as in the ICCPR (art 5). The 1930
Convention on Forced Labour defines forced or compulsory labor as:

...all work or service
which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which
the said person has not offered himself voluntarily. The involuntary nature of
labour and the threat of penalty are the two crucial elements in the definition
of forced labour. The 1930 Convention limits the conditions under which forced
labour may be exacted from individuals, and commits state parties to abolish
its practice within their territories; states should “undertake[s] to
suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms within the
shortest possible period.[370]

More recent
international law in this area has been concerned with outlawing forced labor
altogether. The Convention Concerning the Abolition of Forced Labour (1957)
requires state parties to “suppress and not to make use of any form of
forced or compulsory labour: (a) as a means of political coercion or education...
(b) as a method of mobilizing and using labour for purposes of economic
development; as a means of labour discipline....”[371]

The ICCPR, in art 8(c) allows
limited exceptions to the prohibition on forced or compulsory labor, but
restricts these to hard labor as part of a punishment for a crime, and:

(i) Any work or service ...
normally required of a person who is under detention in consequence of a lawful
order of a court, or of a person during conditional release from such
detention;

(ii) Any service of a
military character and, in countries where conscientious objection is
recognized, any national service required by law of conscientious objectors;

(iii) Any service exacted in
cases of emergency or calamity threatening the life or well-being of the
community;

(iv) Any work or service
which forms part of normal civil obligations.

According to the
International Labour Organization, the exception for military service is based
on the necessity for national defense; it is not intended for public works
projects. The exception for emergencies is intended to apply to genuine
emergencies and not to public works projects and further, the nature and
duration of the compulsory labor must have a direct correlation to the nature
of the event and be limited to what is strictly required by the situation and
that minor communal services...must be of direct interest to the community and
not relate to the execution of works intended to benefit a specific group.[372]

The United States State
Department Human Rights Report for 2007 on Eritrea, in its section concerning
prohibitions on forced labor, describes the implementation of national service
in this way:

The law prohibits forced or
compulsory labor, including by children; however, there were unconfirmed
reports that it occurred during the year. The government required all men
between the ages of 18 and 54 and women between the ages of 18 and 47 to participate
in the national service program, which included military training and civilian
work programs. Some citizens were reportedly enlisted in the national service
for many years with no prospective end date. The government justifies its
open-ended draft on the basis of the undemarcated border with Ethiopia. Some
national service members were assigned to return to their civilian jobs while
nominally kept in the military because their skills were deemed critical to the
functioning of the government or the economy. These individuals continued to
receive only their national service salary. The government required them to
forfeit to the government any money they earned above and beyond that salary.
Government employees generally were unable to leave their jobs or take new
employment. Draft evaders often were used as laborers on government development
projects.[373]

The scale of
forced labor in Eritrea has contributed to the rising number of refugees
fleeing Eritrea. Therefore the national service policy in Eritrea has direct
consequences for the countries hosting asylum seekers from that country.

Part 5: Responding to Eritrea’s Crisis

Eritrea’s occasionally
isolationist but always independent behavior is rooted in the history of the
EPLF and the independence struggle. The Eritrean people achieved independence
against all expectations, defeating a country with a much larger army, which
received, at different stages, massive amounts of US and Soviet military
assistance.

Since 1962, when the UN
failed to condemn Ethiopia’s dissolution of the Eritrean federation, the
history of the struggle for Eritrean independence is a singular story of
hardship and discipline in the face of international indifference. This history
has left a strong attitude of self-reliance which has increasingly led Eritrea
to isolate itself from what it views—rightly or wrongly—as an
international community tainted by pro-Ethiopian bias. As this attitude deepens
in the context of the ‘no war no peace’ stand-off with Ethiopia, it
is not just Eritreans but the entire region that suffers.

Eritrean Foreign Policy

Eritrea’s most
important relationship is clearly with Ethiopia. For better or for worse, it
shapes Eritrea’s policies regionally and beyond. The border war between
Eritrea and Ethiopia and the subsequent impasse has not only had serious
domestic effects in each country, it has complicated the security situation in
the entire region. The search for a solution to the conflict in Somalia is
hampered by the way Eritrea and Ethiopia have supported opposing sides in a
form of proxy war. In addition, over the past years, Eritrea’s government
has had military confrontations with all of its neighbors—not just
Ethiopia, but also Yemen, Sudan, and most recently, Djibouti.

Eritrean forces continue to occupy
Djiboutian border posts in defiance of a January 2009 UN Security Council
resolution calling on the Eritrean troops to withdraw. Tensions are high, and
since Eritrea withdrew from the regional Intergovernmental Authority on
Development (IGAD), there is no regional forum in which these differences can
be articulated. Eritrea suspended its membership of IGAD in April 2007 because
of its perceived bias in favor of Ethiopia and its intervention in Somalia to
support the TFG—Eritrea had been arming the Islamist groups opposing the
TFG, as well as Ethiopian armed opposition groups.[374]Similarly, Eritrea has had
tensions with the African Union because of its perceived support of Ethiopia.
Isolated from its neighbors and deeply mistrustful of the US, Eritrea has
cultivated other international relationships in recent years, notably with China,
Libya, Iran, and Qatar. Qatar is reportedly financing a major resort in the
Dahlak Islands.

There is no obvious regional
leader whom the Eritrean government views as sufficiently impartial to broker a
peace with Djibouti or Ethiopia and articulate what regional cooperation might
look like. As long as Ethiopia and Eritrea seek to exploit the instability in
Somalia rather than reduce or solve it, the whole region—and international
shipping—suffers, both in terms of regional security threats from
terrorism and piracy but also massive displacement of population, famine, and
humanitarian crises all exacerbated by regional mistrust and the proxy war
between Ethiopia and Eritrea. As long as the standoff continues, there is
little opening to engage with the Eritrean government on human rights issues,
since the regime justifies its mass mobilization and repression in terms of
national security and emergency.

The US, European Union, the
AU, and the UN working together in a coordinated fashion could and should play
a role in reducing regional tensions, but doing so will require a marked shift
in policy (see below).

The United States

Relations between the US and
Eritrea were good during the 1990s, with military cooperation stemming from US
interest in using the Red Sea ports of Assab and Massawa. But relations have soured
since the border war of 1998-2000, and particularly since the US and the
international community more broadly—including the UN Security
Council—failed to force Ethiopia to accept the decision of the border
commission. After the US chose Djibouti for the site of its Combined Joint Task
Force Headquarters, relations went from bad to worse, even as the US was
developing closer cooperation with Ethiopia on security matters in the Horn of
Africa.[375]

Relations with the US were
pushed further towards an impasse when during the G-15 crackdown in 2001
Eritrea arrested two US embassy employees whom it accused of spying. The two
Eritrean staff remain in detention up to now. In 2005 Eritrea stopped all USAID
programs and arrested two more Eritrean staff of the US embassy, this time on
allegations of human trafficking.[376]

In response, the US imposed
restrictions on Eritrean diplomatic staff in the US and forced the closure of
Eritrea’s only consulate in Oakland, California.[377] In a gradually rising tide of insults, relations with
Eritrea have steadily deteriorated. The normalization of diplomatic relations
is conditioned on the release of the four US employees.

In the meantime Eritrea
continues to support armed opposition groups in Ethiopia, eastern and western
Sudan; and anti-Ethiopian forces in Somalia. As a result of its funding and
arming of Somali opposition forces, particularly the al-Shabaab, in 2007 the US
threatened to put Eritrea on its list of state sponsors of terrorism although
it has yet to do so.[378]Instead, in May 2008 the US stated
that Eritrea was “not co-operating fully” in the war on terror.[379]Eritrea, for its part, claims the
CIA is trying to undermine it and even blamed the US for “meddling”
when Eritrean forces attacked Djibouti.[380]

Despite Eritrea’s
apparently hostile rhetoric, the US remains a critical player in the Horn of
Africa. For years US policy in the Horn of Africa has prioritized
security—and particularly its counterterrorism partnership with
Ethiopia—above all other concerns. In order for human rights and
democratization to gain ground in Eritrea, it is important that policy from
Washington becomes more nuanced and balanced, particularly vis-à-vis its
relationship with Ethiopia. Unwillingness to criticize Ethiopia over its human
rights record or its failure to allow demarcation of the border will undermine
US credibility with Eritrea. The very serious human rights human rights
concerns in both Eritrea and Ethiopia are linked and should be placed at the
forefront of US policy in the Horn.

The European Union

At first sight the EU appears to be in a stronger position to engage with
the government of Eritrea on human rights and democracy. The EU recently
allocated €122 million of development funds for Eritrea under the 10th
European Development Fund (EDF) which spans the period 2008-2013.[381]At the time of writing, however, the funds have yet to
be disbursed because of lingering questions from the European Parliament about
Eritrea’s human rights record and lack of progress in establishing a
democratic framework.

Under the Cotonou Agreement,
funds disbursed as part of the EDF are subject to strict human rights clauses.
This does not include humanitarian aid which comes from a different budget.
Title II of the agreement deals with what is called the “political
dimension” of the development partnership between the EU and the African,
Caribbean, and Pacific countries that have signed the agreement. Article 8
under this title commits both parties to a “political dialogue”
which states, inter alia: “The dialogue shall also encompass a
regular assessment of the developments concerning the respect for human rights,
democratic principles, the rule of law and good governance.”[382] Article 9 states, “Respect for human rights,
democratic principles and the rule of law, which underpin the ACP-EU
Partnership, shall underpin the domestic and international policies of the
Parties and constitute the essential elements of this Agreement .... The
Partnership shall actively support the promotion of human rights, processes of
democratization and good governance.”[383]

According to the Commission,
the money for 2008-2013 has been allocated but will only be disbursed according
to negotiated agreements with the Eritrean government, part of which should
involve dialogue on human rights as above.[384] However, spending the money is unlikely to be easy.
Only 25 percent of the last tranche of assistance has been paid. The European
Commission in its Humanitarian Aid Decision of February 2008 notes that:

Since the interruption of
the democratisation process in 2001, EC cooperation with Eritrea has been
confronted with major political and technical difficulties. Cooperation was
frozen for several years in reaction to the expulsion of the Italian
Ambassador, which led to a certain backlog with the 9th EDF funds. Technical
hurdles include the limited number of private enterprises able to participate
in tenders, restricted access for consultants and even EC staff to projects,
and bureaucratic delays. As of 25 September 2008, only half of the 9th EDF had
been contracted and 25 percent had been paid.[385]

The response of the
Commission to intransigence from the Eritreans was to
“reinvigorate” development cooperation and to begin a round of
political dialogue to be evaluated at the end of 2008.[386] Diplomats at the European Commission claim that the
monthly dialogue on political issues is going well and are reluctant to suspend
assistance on human rights grounds.[387] The difficulty in the EU’s relationship with
Eritrea is that the Cotonou Agreement envisages teleological progress towards
more democracy and stronger respect for human rights, not less.

The human rights environment
is deteriorating rapidly in Eritrea, not moving in the other direction. The
European Parliament, for its part, has noticed this and has sounded an
increasingly critical note on Eritrea’s human rights record. In the
report of its mission to Eritrea in 2008 the Parliament said:

As it could be argued for
other countries in the Horn, in Eritrea, the current situation is not in
conformity with the essential elements of cooperation stated in Article 9 of
the Cotonou agreement. Tangible progress in the near future in the field of
human rights is critical for the European Parliament, which will follow closely
the political dialogue and the process towards adoption of the Country Strategy
Paper. As a first step, the Eritrean authorities should enhance transparency about
the prison system and allow independent humanitarian organisations, such as the
ICRC, to regularly visit all prisoners, including the so-called G11 and the
group of journalists arrested in September 2001. Access to families, lawyers
and medical treatment must equally be granted in accordance with international
human rights standards. Where no charges have been brought against prisoners in
a reasonable period of time, they should be unconditionally released. Those
with specific charges against them should be brought to a speedy and fair
trial. Bodies of prisoners who died in detention should be handed over to their
families.”[388]

It is ambitious of the
EU—to say the least—to forge ahead with negotiations for further
assistance with a country so obviously uninterested in the principles of the
Agreement. However, the economy of Eritrea is very weak. The country cannot
afford food imports. It defaulted on World Bank credits in October 2008.[389] The cost of massive mobilization and repression is
taking its toll on the productive capacity of the nation, not to mention the
fact that the manpower is leaving in droves. At such a time, the EU has an
opportunity to strengthen its commitment to human rights in Eritrea by
conditioning future development assistance on human rights benchmarks. To
continue in the current vein, characterized by intransigence and non-cooperation
from the Eritrean government, and when it is impossible to tell where EU money
is going, is unsustainable. The mere existence of a dialogue is not evidence of
concrete improvements in human rights.

Eritrea consistently
maintains that the massive mobilization measures and suspension of freedoms are
somehow justified by the frozen border dispute with Ethiopia. As a major
development partner of both Ethiopia and Eritrea, together with pushing for a
resolution of the demarcation standoff, the EU needs to vigorously press for
progress on human rights as a basic first step to improving the lives of
Eritreans.[390]

Forced labor for
development

Testimony from refugees, UN
officials and others working in Eritrea suggests that all government
development projects are implemented by national service recruits, whose labor
is by definition, forced and, often, essentially unpaid.[391] In some cases, professionals with expertise may be
deployed to work for other agencies and their salaries paid to the Ministry of
Defense, in others prisoners or conscripts are made to do the work and the NGO
or UN agency is billed for the labor cost at commercial prices.[392]

Under the second United Nations
Development Assistant Framework (2007-2011), the following agencies are active
in Eritrea: UNDP, UNICEF, WHO, FAO, UNHCR, UNFPA, ILO, UNIFEM, UNESCO, as well
as IFAD.[393] However, a former UN official told Human Rights
Watch, “the national service and prison labor are used to implement
construction projects. What we [the UN] are interested in is that the project
is implemented, we turn a blind eye to how it is done. UN agencies understand
that the Eritreans use national service but we don’t care... We give them
money, they do the labor, we don’t pay salaries, they ask for a lump sum
for each project... the labor cost will be calculated, receipts issued... we
don’t go into too much detail otherwise they will kick us out of the
country.”[394]

It appears that development
projects funded by the European Union are implemented in the same way, with
conscript labor organized through the government. The EU has complained about
the lack of access to monitor its projects—to check that the money is
being spent as agreed.[395] In such circumstances it is impossible for the EU to
be able to verify whether its projects are being implemented at all, let alone
to see whether forced labor is being used.

In interviews with Human
Rights Watch, diplomats in Asmara and at the European Commission in Brussels
were open about the use of national service labor in implementing assistance
projects, saying that the main concern was the amount people were paid, not the
fact that they might face punishment if they did not work. At the Commission,
an official acknowledged that conscript labor was used by companies with ties
to the military and the party who were tendering for Commission projects, but
that the relevant European regulation being violated was one of “fair
competition” because low labor costs meant that such companies could
undercut others.[396] Forced labor should be on the EU’s agenda for
dialogue on human rights, not just fair competition.

An EU spokesman claimed in an
article that the Eritrean government does not receive aid directly from the EU.[397] This is a disingenuous claim given that there are so
few NGOs and monitoring projects and distribution aid to appropriate standards
is impossible. There are no independent private companies in Eritrea therefore
any company receiving EU money has ties to the regime and may use forced labor.
It is impossible to argue that supporting the military and party elites within
a system that impoverishes its own citizens is not supporting the government.
As Glenys Kinnock MEP has noted with regard to EU development assistance,
“There are no NGOs in Eritrea. So who is distributing the aid? Who is
ensuring that it doesn’t go into the wrong hands?”[398]

Monitoring to check where EU
money is ending up and to ensure that forced labor is not used to implement EU
and UN funded projects should be a priority and a matter of urgency.

The United Nations

The UN was forced to
terminate the United Nations Mission to Eritrea and Ethiopia (UNMEE) after its
operations were continually frustrated by the Eritrean government (in response
to Ethiopia’s adamant refusal to comply with United Nations demands that
it permit demarcation of the border in accordance with the Algiers Agreement).
The final report of UNMEE was forwarded to the Security Council on October 15,
2008.

The UN agencies working in
Eritrea should demand much higher levels of accountability on human rights
standards from the Eritrean government. Moreover, the United Nations has a role
to play along with the AU, EU, and US in shaping the regional security environment
within which human rights can be addressed. This is particularly important
given the humanitarian consequences of the border stand-off and Eritrea’s
unwillingness to co-operate with independent agencies on emergency relief.

Acknowledgements

This report was researched
and written by the Horn of Africa research team in the Africa division of Human
Rights Watch. The report was edited by Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor, and
Andrew Mawson, deputy director of the Program office of Human Rights Watch.
Bill Frelick, Refugee Policy director, and Heba Morayef, researcher in the
Middle East and North Africa division, reviewed sections of the report.

Production assistance was
provided by McKenzie Price, associate in the Africa division. Anna Lopriore
coordinated photo preparation and Grace Choi prepared the report for
publication.

Human Rights Watch would like
to thank Dr. Martin Hill for his helpful comments on a draft of the report. We
are also grateful to additional experts who requested anonymity but made
essential contributions at the research and writing stages.

Above all, we would like to
extend our deep gratitude to all of the Eritrean refugees who agreed to be
interviewed or otherwise shared their experiences with us in Djibouti, Italy,
and elsewhere, sometimes in very difficult circumstances. We recognize just how
fearful many of you were about speaking and we hope this report contributes to
raising awareness of and alleviating your plight, wherever you are.

Annex: A List of Known Detention Facilities in Eritrea

The following are known
detention facilities in Eritrea that have been mentioned in reports about the
country and in interviews with Human Rights Watch. This list is not a complete
or comprehensive list of Eritrean detention facilities.

Note:

Each army division and
sub-unit has its own prison i.e. division, brigade, and battalion-level
prisons.

Each town has various
police stations with detention/interrogation facilities i.e. 1st
and 2nd police station in Massawa, and stations 1 to 5 (at
least) in Asmara.

Names are transliterations
from the original Tigrinya and Arabic. Transliterations can vary
considerably. We use the more common forms.

NAME
(alternative spelling)

LOCATION

TYPE
OF FACILITY

COMMENTS

SOURCE

Aderser

In/near
Adderser:

“Hadishu
Ma’asker” or “new camp”

25
kilometers from Sawa camp, (see below)

Military
camp/training center

underground

US
State Dept. Report 2005, HRW interviews

Adi
Abeto (Adi-Abieto)

10
to 15 kilometers northeast of Asmara off the road to Keren

Main
prison for Asmara; also used as processing center to send prisoners elsewhere

HRW
interviews, Amnesty International 2004, US State Dept. Report 2004

Adi
Nefas

Assab

Military
detention centre

Adi
Qala (Adi Quala or Adi Kwala)

40
kilometers north of Ethiopian border, off main road from Asmara through
Mendefera

Military
prison

HRW
interviews

Agip

Asmara

Police-run
facility

HRW
interviews, Reporters sans frontières

Alla
(Ala)

40
kilometers from Asmara, near Dekemhare town

Old
prison from Italian days

HRW
interviews, Amnesty International, 2004

Assab
Front prison

also
known as “Gimbar”

Assab

Military
prison

HRW
interviews

Baharia
Naval Base

Massawa

Military
facility

HRW
interviews

Barentu

Barentu
town

Civilian
prison

HRW
interviews

Dahlak
Kebir

Dahlak
archipelago, islands in the Red Sea

Maximum
security

Specifically
for “political” prisoners, including those returned from Malta
and Egypt

HRW
interviews, Amnesty International, 2004

Duarwa

South
of Asmara on the road to Adi Quala before Adi Ugri

HRW
interviews

Era
Eiro (Eiraeiro)

Filfil-Selomuna
area north of the Asmara-Massawa road

Secret
jail, not acknowledged by the government

Some
of the G15 were reportedly held there

HRW
interviews, awate.com

Gedem

Gedem,
40 kilometers south of Massawa

The
site of forced prison labor for the construction of a naval base

HRW
interviews, awate.com

Ghatelay
(Ghatielay)

About
40 to 45 kilometers northwest of Asmara off main road to Massawa

Military

Forced
labor camp to build a military base there

HRW
interviews

Halhalas

Sub-provincial
prison 45 kilometers from Asmara (possibly part of Alla)

Specifically
for those caught trying to cross the border

HRW
interviews

Kambo
Ndafurstale

In
Sanafe town

Military
jail

HRW
interviews

Klima

Near
Assab

HRW
interviews

Mai
Daga

45
kilometers south of Asmara (near Decamhare)

HRW
interviews, Amnesty International, 2004

Mai
Duma/Dima/Dyma

South
of Asmara off Mendefera Barentu road about 10 kilometers. West of Areza.

Military

HRW
interviews

Mai
Srwa

Outside
Asmara

Political
prisoners and Pentecostal pastors

Shipping
containers reported

HRW
interviews, Amnesty International, 2005/6

Mai
Temenei

Military
prison

Amnesty
International, 2004

Metkelabet

Between
Massawa and Asmara

Military
prison belonging to the 32nd division

HRW
interviews

Me’eter

Between
Nakfa and the coast

HRW
interviews

Nakhura
Island

Part
of the Dahlak complex of prisons

Maximum
security

First
established as colonial prison in 19th century to incarcerate
Eritrean objectors to Italian rule

HRW
interviews

Prima
1+2

Military
prison

HRW
interviews

Camp
Sawa

In/near
Sawa:

6th
camp or “Enda

Shadushay” and Abi Masker

Along
Sawa river, in far western Eritrea near the border with Sudan, about 10
kilometers south of road midway between Sebderat and Hawashayt

Military
camp/training center

Draft
evaders, Pentecostal conscripts, and those trying to flee the country

HRW
interviews, Amnesty International 2004, awate.com

Sembel

Asmara
suburb

Possibly
the normal prison of Sembel town, but also mentioned as a place for political
prisoners

Inmates
mixed: civilians, military, and Ethiopians

HRW
interviews, farajat.com

Tehadasso

Military

Shipping
containers reported

Amnesty
International, 2004

Tessenei

Tessenei

Military

Amnesty
International 2004

‘Tract
B’

Asmara

Military

A
former US storage facility near Asmara airport

HRW
interviews, Amnesty International, 2004

Tsererat

Asmara

Military

Mainly
for EPLF veterans, underground cells

Amnesty
International, 2004

Wi’ya/Wi’a/Wieh

Including
a particular unit called “Enda commando”

Red
Sea Coast, about 40 kilometers southeast of Massawa, off road to Assab

Military
camp/training center

Enda
Commando is a zinc unit above ground

HRW
interviews, Amnesty International, US State Dept. Report 2005

[1]Other
languages include Afar, Kunama, and Tigre. CIA World Factbook,
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/er.html. See
also David Pool, From Guerillas to Government: The Eritrean People’s
Liberation Front (Oxford: James Currey; and Athens, Ohio: Ohio University
Press, 2001), pp. 7-11.

[2]Res. 390(v), UN Gen.
Assembly, 5th Session at (1950), p. 20. For further details on the history of
US policy, and particularly its resistance to Eritrean independence see Dan
Connell, Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution (Red
Sea Press, 1997).

[7]David Pool, From Guerillas to Government, p.
157. See also Dan Connell, Conversations with Eritrean Political Prisoners
(Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2005) p. 156. The estimate of 700,000 refugees,
which is on the high end, comes from Kidane Mengisteab and Okbazghi Yohannes, Anatomy
of an African Tragedy: Political, Economic and Foreign Policy Crisis in
Post-Independence Eritrea (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2005), p. 71. Pool
estimates that 50,000 to 60,000 Ethiopian troops were killed and wounded in
Eritrea but notes the numbers have not been verified, Pool, p. 146.

[13]
Pool, From Guerrillas to Government, pp. 76-79; Kidane & Okbazghi, Anatomy
of an African Tragedy, pp. 45-50. Manqa is the Tigrinya word for bat
and was given to the group by the EPLF leadership because of the group’s
nighttime efforts to recruit followers.

[21]Human Rights Watch wrote in 1991, “[The]
last three years of the war in Eritrea saw no respite from mass abuses of human
rights by the Ethiopian army.” Africa Watch, Evil Days, p. 237.
For further details, see pp. 237-249.

[22]A 1992 Eritrean Nationality Proclamation, no.
21/1992, defined as Eritrean “any person born to a parent of Eritrean
origin in Eritrea or abroad.” The proclamation defined as a person
“of Eritrean origin” anyone who was a resident of Eritrea in 1933.

[23]Although
the EPLF did not reconcile with the rival ELF and other factions, the new
government offered an amnesty to individuals belonging to those groups, which
were not allowed to form inside Eritrea.

[24]Eritreans
often have three names but are usually known by their first name, the name they
are given at birth. The second name is generally the name of the father and the
third name is their grandfather’s. In this report Human Rights Watch uses
“Isayas” to identify President Isayas Afewerki.

[25]See,
Amnesty International, 1997 Annual Report for Eritrea, available at
http://www.amnestyusa.org/annualreport.php?id=E9D2FF21FC6AB47C80256A0F005BEB98&c=ERI
(accessed December 19, 2008); United States Department of State Eritrea Human
Rights Practices, 1995, available at http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/democracy/1995_hrp_report/95hrp_report_africa/Eritrea.html
(accessed December 19, 2008). Among those arrested before 2001 were at least
three journalists,detained for their
reporting (Ruth Simon, Zemenfes Haile, and Gebrehiwot Keleta). Zemenfes and
Gebrehiwot have never been released.

[26]Ibid. There is circumstantial evidence of executions of
men considered collaborators with alleged Islamic jihadist groups on June 18,
1997, “The ‘Executed’: No Smoking Gun, but Plenty of
Circumstantial Evidence,” Gedab News, March 13, 2003,
http://www.awate.com/artman/publish/printer_1090.shtml (accessed January 15,
2009).

[27]Eritrean Ministry of Internal Affairs, March 4, 1995,
available at http://www.awate.com/portal/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1345&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=11
(accessed December 19, 2008).

[28]Jehovah’s Witnesses Office of Public Information,
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Eritrea (Oct. 2008) 5, available at
http://www.jw-media.org/region/africa_middle_east/eritrea/english/human_rights/eri_e081021_list.htm
(accessed December 19, 2008).

[32]In an interview with Le Monde in May 2008,
Isayas blamed the “interruption of the [Eritrean] political process”
on the “abnormal situation” Eritrea has been in for the past 10
years, as well as the interference of the United States. He also accused the
international media of “suffocating freedom of expression” in
Africa. “President Isayas Afewerki’s Interview with Reuters and Le
Monde,” May 13, 2008, http://www.eastafro.com/Post/2008/05/15/eritrea-president-isaias-afwerkis-interview-with-reuters-may-13-2008/
(accessed February 26, 2009).

[45]Some sources estimate that Eritrea
and Ethiopia respectively maintain 124,000 and 100,000 troops along the border.
Report of the fact-finding mission of a Delegation of the Development Committee
of the European Parliament to the Horn of Africa (Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia)
(25 October-2 November 2008), p. 2.</Titre>

[55] “Journalist Dawit
Isaak held without trial for almost eight years, believed to be seriously ill,”
International Federation of Journalists press release, Brussels, February 2009,
http://www.protectionline.org/Journalist-Dawit-Isaak-held,7868.html (accessed
March 2, 2009).

[56]The
US State Department’s annual survey of religious freedom cites NGO
reports claiming that 3,225 Christians from unregistered religions are
currently detained. US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, “International Religious Freedom Report – 2008:
Eritrea,” September 19, 2008,
http://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108367.htm (accessed February 27,
2009). An independent academic who is an authority on Ethiopia and Eritrea
estimated that 5,000-10,000 people are detained for political and religious
reasons, excluding national service deserters. Human Rights Watch interview,
London, January 11, 2009. See also Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Briefing:
Eritrea, June 2007, on file with Human Rights Watch, which claims that up to
40,000 people are in detention, including religious prisoners, journalists,
politicians, and national service deserters.

[57]The
1998-2000 war with Ethiopia is not the Eritrean government’s only attempt
to resolve border disputes by force. In 1996, Eritrea attacked Yemeni troops on
Greater Hanish Island, part of the Hanish archipelago in the Red Sea that both
countries claimed. After deaths on both sides, the two countries referred the
dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration. In 1998 the court awarded Yemen
ownership of the larger islands including Greater Hanish and recognized Eritrea’s
sovereignty over islets to the south of the main Hanish group. Permanent Court
of Arbitration, Eritrea-Yemen Arbitration Award chap. IX, (October 1998),
http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/pca/ER-YEchap11.htm (accessed December
19, 2008).

[59]Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia pursuant to
Security Council Resolution 1811 (2008), p. 24. The Monitoring Group estimated
that the Eritrean government was providing around half a million US dollars a
month to militias in Somalia during 2008, and that this was not simply rogue elements
within the military but an established policy of the government:

“The Monitoring Group believes that Eritrean
arms embargo violations take place with the knowledge and authorization of
senior officials within the Eritrean Government and the ruling People’s
Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ). Operational responsibility, however,
lies with the Eritrean intelligence services. According to multiple opposition
and Government sources, the senior figure is Colonel Te’ame Goitom. The
Monitoring Group is continuing to investigate the alleged involvement of at
least five other Eritrean Government officials.”

[60]There
is speculation that the Eritrean government chose this location because it is
strategically important. It the highest point overlooking the Bab el Mandeb
strait, the narrowest point between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and a key
shipping passage. Human Rights Watch interview with western diplomats,
Djibouti, September 2008.

[61]Omar
Hassan, “Two dead in Djibouti, Eritrea border clash,” Reuters, June
11, 2008.Fighting resulted in 35 deaths
and dozens of wounded according to a UN fact-finding mission. The mission,
banned by President Isayas from access to Eritrea, concluded that Eritrea had
been the aggressor. Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the
Djibouti Eritrea Crisis, Jul 28 – Aug6 2008 (S/2008/602), http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/Erit%20Djibou%20S%202008%20294.pdf
(accessed December 23, 2008). See also: Institute for Security Studies,
Situation Report, 15 September 2008,
http://www.issafrica.org/index.php?link_id=3&slink_id=122&link_type=12&slink_type=12&tmpl_id=3
(accessed January 26, 2009).

[66]
Report of the fact-finding mission of a Delegation of the Development Committee
of the European Parliament to the Horn of Africa (Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia)
(25 October-2 November 2008).

[67]
The Eritrea country page of the World Food Program website states that “[…]
the Government announced in September 2005 a policy
shift away from free food distributions in favor of food-for-work. Pending its
proposed shift to food-for-work as opposed to free food hand-outs, the
Government suspended general feeding operations in September 2005 except for
recently resettled IDPs and IDPs in camps. In April 2006 after WFP attempted to
amend its work plan to accommodate the change in policy, the government
announced a new policy involving exclusively cash-for-work (participants would
be paid a salary in cash for their work to be financed through food-aid
monetization).” World Food Program, Eritrea country page, http://www.wfp.org/countries/eritrea (accessed March 3, 2009).

[75]Dan
Connell, “Eritrea and the United States: the ‘war on terror’
and the Horn of Africa,” in Richard Reid, ed., Eritrea’s
External Relations: Understanding its regional role and foreign policy
(Chatham House, 2009), p. 207.

[77]The UN Declaration on Enforced Disappearances defines “disappeared”
persons as those who are “arrested, detained, or abducted against their
will or otherwise deprived of liberty by government officials, or by organized
groups or private individuals acting on behalf of, or with the direct or
indirect support, consent, or acquiescence of the government, followed by a
refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned or by a
refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty, which places such
persons outside the protection of the law.” United Nations Declaration on
the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances (Convention against
Enforced Disappearances), adopted December 18, 1992, G.A. res. 47/133, 47 UN
GAOR Supp. (No. 49) at 207, UN Doc. A/47/49 (1992), art. 7. In Eritrea, family
members do not always enquire after the whereabouts of their relatives due to
pervasive fear, and in some cases, first-hand experience that they will be
arrested in turn if they make such inquiries. Nonetheless, while technically
these cases may not constitute “disappearances,” in most of the
cases documented by Human Rights Watch the “disappeared”
individuals were last seen when arrested by Eritrean security forces,
and the practice of arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention by
the government are widely known by the Eritrean public. Human Rights Watch
therefore views these cases as “disappearances.”

[94]See the Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Punishment or Treatment, art. 1, http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm
(accessed January 28, 2009). Ethiopia acceded to the Convention against Torture
on April 13, 1994.

[110]Ibid and Human Rights Watch interviews with
former detainees, Djibouti and Italy, September and November 2008.

[111]Human Rights Watch interviews with former
detainees, Djibouti and Italy, September and October 2008.

[112]Human Rights Watch interviews with former
political prisoners, Sicily, Italy, October 26 and 30, 2008.

[113]See US State Department, Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
– 2008: Eritrea,” February 25, 2009, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/af/119000.htm (accessed February 27, 2009). See also Amnesty
International, You have no right to ask, reports by Christian Solidarity
Worldwide available at www.csw.org.uk, and accounts on www.awate.com and www.delina.org.
See also Helen Berhane (former political prisoner, now a refugee in Denmark)
interview with BBC World Service, October 24, 2008 http://blip.tv/file/443487
(accessed December 24, 2008).

[114]Human Rights Watch interviews Djibouti and
Italy, September and October 2008, and Amnesty International, You have no
right to ask.

[115]Human Rights Watch interviewed former
detainees in Dahlak who said that they had been detained alongside returnees
from Malta.

[116]Human Right Watch interviews with former
conscript and journalist, Sicily, Italy, October 30, 2008.

132.
See, for example, www.awate.com, www.delina.org, and
www.ehrea.org. A defunct website called www.farajat.com had a
list of over 800 people who had disappeared at the hands of the EPLF and the
PFDJ; the list is on file with Human Rights Watch. A site called
www.farajat.net exists but does not have the list posted.

[133]Human
Rights Watch interviews, Djibouti and Italy, September and October 2008. See
also, Amnesty International, You have no right to ask; Reporters sans
frontières, www.rsf.org; and Christian Solidarity Worldwide,
www.csw.org.uk.

[138]Human
Rights Watch interview with former officer, Djibouti, September 16, 2008, see
also an article describing the circular from ‘a very reliable
source,’ at http://www.awate.com/portal/content/view/4502/3/ (accessed January 26, 2009).

[158]Human Rights Watch interviews with diplomat,
Asmara, by phone, January 13, 2009; with Gaim Kibreab, London, December 4,
2008; and with Eritrean refugees in Djibouti and Italy, September and October
2008.

[162]Human Rights Watch interviews with Eritrean
refugees in Djibouti and Italy, September and October 2008. See also Government
of Eritrea, ‘Proclamation of National Service No.82/1995,’ Eritrean
Gazette, No.11 October 23, 1995, articles 12 and 14. See note 140, above.

[163]Report of the fact-finding mission of a
Delegation of the Development Committee of the European Parliament to the Horn
of Africa (Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia) (25 October-2 November 2008), p. 5.

[164]
United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General on Ethiopia and Eritrea,
S/2007/33, January 22, 2007, p. 3.

[165]
United Nations, “Safety and Security of humanitarian personnel and
protection of United Nations personnel,” A/60/223/Corr.1, November 10,
2005, http://www.iom.ch/jahia/webdav/shared/shared/mainsite/policy_and_research/un/60/A_60_223_corr_1_en.pdf
(accessed March 3, 2009).

[169]It is
unclear exactly how many Eritreans are fleeing every month but the numbers have
steadily increased over the past few years. See “Sudan asks UN for aid
for Eritrean, Somali refugees,’” Reuters, December 22, 2008, http://lite.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LM314868.htm
(accessed March 3, 2009). Ethiopia claims there are more than 30,000 Eritrean
refugees in the Shimelba camp but the US Committee for Refugees put the number
of Eritreans in Shimelba at 16,800 in 2008. See Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, “A Week in the Horn,” Jan. 23, 2009, http://www.mfa.gov.et/Press_Section/Week_Horn_Africa_January_23_2009.htm
and United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, World
Refugee Survey 2008 - Ethiopia, June 19, 2008. Online. UNHCR Refworld,
available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/485f50d171.html (accessed
March 3, 2009).

[180]For
further details on the persecution of Christians and Jehovah’s witnesses
in Eritrea, see Amnesty International, Eritrea: Religious Persecution,
December 7, 2005, at http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR640132005?open&of=ENG-ERI
(accessed February 26, 2009). See also US State Department, Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “International Religious Freedom
Report – 2008: Eritrea,” http://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108367.htm
(accessed February 26, 2009).

[189]Eritrea acceded to the
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on February 16,
2005, with a declaration that the minimum age for recruitment into the armed
forces is 18.
http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&id=135&chapter=4&lang=en
(accessed February 26, 2009).

[201]Human Rights Watch interviews with Eritrean
refugees, Sicily, Italy, October 24-31, 2008, and Human Rights Watch interviews
with diplomats, by phone, January 13 and 22, 2009. See also Amnesty
International, You have no right to ask.

[212]The ICCPR exemption from the prohibition on
“forced or compulsory labour” only applies to service of “a
military character”, or that required of conscientious objectors, or
“normal civil obligations”. (ICCPR article 8(3)).

[216]Report of the fact-finding mission of a
Delegation of the Development Committee of the European Parliament to the Horn
of Africa (Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia) (25 October-2 November 2008), p. 5.

[217]Human Rights Watch, World Report 2007, p. 117,
Amnesty, You have no right to ask - Government resists scrutiny on human
rights, 2004, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AFR64/003/2004/en
(accessed, December 8, 2008).

[233]
RSF urged the European Union to cut development aid to Eritrea. “Plea to
EU to suspend development aid in light of fresh crackdown on
journalists,” Reporters sans frontières, March 6, 2009, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=30491
(accessed March 27, 2009).

[246]According
to Amnesty International, about 90 percent of the Eritrean population are
followers of Sunni Islam or the Eritrean Orthodox church. Five percent are
Roman Catholics and two percent are Protestants, belonging to a Lutheran church
known as the Evangelical Church of Eritrea, part of the Lutheran World
Federation. There are also small numbers of Jehovah’s Witnesses, growing
numbers of evangelical or “born again” protestant churches, and a
few followers of the Baha’i faith. Amnesty International, Eritrea:
Religious Persecution, AF/64/013/2005, December 7, 2005.

[256]See for example, Amnesty International,
‘Urgent Action Eritrea: Torture/Prisoners of Conscience’ November
3, 2006 which mentions one hundred and sixty members of banned churches
arrested on October 15 and 16 2006. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AFR64/013/2006/en
(accessed, December 19, 2008).

[259]Compass Direct, ‘Christian Deaths Mount
in Eritrean Prisons,’ January 23, 2009. The US State Department relied on
these reports for its estimate of at least 3,000 individuals in detention at
the end of 2008. US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2008:
Eritrea,” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/af/119000.htm (accessed February 27, 2009).

[276]US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2004:
Eritrea,” February 28, 2005. The report states: “Men under the age
of fifty, regardless of whether they had completed National Service; women aged
eighteen to twenty seven; members of Jehovah’s Witnesses; and others who
are out of favor with or seen as critical of the government, were routinely
denied exit visas. In addition the government often refused to issue exit visas
to adolescents and children as young as five years of age, either on the
grounds that they were approaching the age of eligibility for National Service
or because their diaspora parent had not paid the two percent income tax
required of all citizens residing abroad. Some citizens were given exit visas
only after posting bonds of approximately US$7,300 (100,000 Nakfa).”

[279]Precise numbers are not available from UNHCR
but an October 2008 UNHCR statement said that 40,000 refugees had attempted to
cross the Red Sea to Yemen in 2008, a large number of them Eritreans. Yemen has
become increasingly concerned by the influx of refugees from the Horn of Africa.
See “Yemen: Move to stem influx of Ethiopians, Eritreans,” IRIN,
October 22, 2008, http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81051
(accessed March 26, 2009).

[284]UNHCR’s policy paper states:
“UNHCR recommends that asylum claims submitted by Eritrean asylum seekers
should undergo a careful assessment to determine their needs for international
protection. It is also recommended that states refrain from all forced returns
of rejected asylum seekers to Eritrea and grant them complementary forms of
protection instead, until further notice.” UNHCR, ‘Position on
return of rejected asylum seekers to Eritrea,’ January 2004 http://www.unhcr.se/Pdf/Position_countryinfo_papers_06/eritrea04.pdf
(accessed January 7, 2009).

[286]Under Mengistu, Ethiopia supported the Sudan
People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) against the Sudanese
government and allowed the SPLM to establish bases in eastern Ethiopia. Eritrea
continued to support Sudanese opposition groups well into the 1990s, including
the Sudanese National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of armed and
political opposition groups. The Ethiopia-Eritrea war of 1998-2000 prompted
considerable realignment of regional dynamics and in 1999 Sudan and Eritrea
signed a reconciliation agreement. “Sudan-Eritrea: Reconciliation
Agreement Signed 5/3/99,” IRIN, May 3, 1999 at
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Hornet/irin_5399b.html (accessed February 10,
2009).

[287]UNHCR’s application of the cessation
clause did not apply to individuals with a “well-founded fear of
persecution.” UNHCR, “Applicability of the “Ceased
Circumstances” Cessation Clauses to Eritrean Refugees Who Fled Their
Country as a Result of the War of Independence Which Ended in June 1991 or as a
Result of the Border Conflict Between Ethiopia and Eritrea Which Ended in June
2000,” February 18, 2002, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,COUNTRYPOS,ERI,,4165729f4,0.html
(accessed February 10, 2009). The repatriation operation was considered
controversial because there were concerns that many Eritreans did not receive
adequate information about their ability to apply for asylum despite the
cessation clause. See Amnesty, You have no right to ask, p. 32.

[305]See Human Rights Watch, Stemming the Flow:
Abuses against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, September 12, 2006.
It is worth noting that 70 women were re-settled in Italy in 2007 after being
repeatedly abused in detention in Libya. Human Right Watch interviews, Italy,
October 2008.

[306]See Human Rights Watch, Stemming the Flow:
“UNHCR conducted interviews with sixty of the Eritrean passengers after
their arrival in Khartoum on 27 August. The group said that they had been
detained without charges for a prolonged period of time in the Libyan town of
Kufra, and had endured repeated physical abuse. They also said that, despite
their request to see UNHCR, they had not been given access to any asylum
procedure. Additionally, the group was never informed of the decision to deport
them to Eritrea, were forced to board a special charter flight, and only found
out after their plane took off that the destination was their country of
origin.”

[317]United Nations, “UN Working Group on
Arbitrary Detention Concludes Visit to Malta,” January 26, 2009, at
http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/125F21AAD7DCBD1AC125754A0057F318?opendocument.

[325]1951 Refugee Convention, Article 23, see: http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/protect?id=3c0762ea4
(accessed January 29, 2009). Under EU law, Art. 28 of the Qualification
Direction says that “Member States shall ensure that beneficiaries of
refugee or subsidiary protection status shall receive, in the Member State that
has granted such statuses, the necessary social assistance, as provided to
nationals of that Member State.” Art 31 says, “The Member State
shall ensure that beneficiaries of refugee or subsidiary protection status have
access to accommodation under equivalent conditions as other third country
nationals legally resident in their territories.”

[329]See for example, Amnesty International’s account
of the families of deserters who were rounded up and arrested: ‘AI, ‘Fear of Torture,’
AFR 64/011/2005, July 28, 2005, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AFR64/011/2005/en (accessed January 5,
2009).

[330]Embassy of the State of Eritrea, Letter from
Senait Berhare, Head of Administration and Finance, to Michael Woldemariam,
Head of Finance, January 20, 2004, on file with Human Rights Watch.

[331]Embassy of the State of Eritrea, London,
Annual Report of the Government’s Income, 2003, on file with Human Rights
Watch.

[333]Human Rights Watch interviews with refugees in
London, October and November 2008, see also Dan Connell, ‘Eritrea and the
United States: the ‘war on terror’ and the horn of Africa,’
in Richard Reid (ed.) Eritrea’s External Relations: Understanding its
regional role and foreign policy (Chatham House, 2009) p. 203

[355]US Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices, Eritrea, February 25, 2004,
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27726.htm (accessed March 26, 2009).

[356]Eritrea ratified the ICCPR in 2002. Other
international and regional human rights instruments to which Eritrea is a party
are as follows: Geneva Conventions and the two additional protocols relating to
the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts and
Non-International Armed Conflicts (2000), UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child (1994), UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination
against Women (1995), International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Racial Discrimination (2001), International Covenant on Social, Economic and
Cultural Rights (2002), African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights
(1999), African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1999).

[357]Resolution 45/111 on basic principles for the
treatment of prisoners, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 14,
1990.

[358]
Eritrea submitted reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2008
under the country review mechanism. See http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc/docs/CRC.C.ERI.3.pdf
(accessed March 27, 2009).

[359]Zegveld v. Eritrea,
communication 250/2002 (Nov. 2003), Para 39-40, attached to Seventeenth Annual
Activity Report of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights
2003 – 2004, available at www.achpr.org/english/activity_reports/17th%20REPORT%20-FINAL,%20Rev2,15dec2004,%20EN.doc. (accessed December 24, 2008) As part of its procedural
argument, Eritrea also said the G15 members had been detained for conspiring to
overthrow the legal government . . . colluding with hostile powers [and]. .
.undermining Eritrean National Security and endangering Eritrean society and
the general welfare of its people.” Para. 47.

[364]Article 19 v. State of Eritrea, communication 275/2003,
adopted at the 41st Ordinary Session in May 2007 and issued as Annex II to the
Report of the Executive Council, Ex. Cl/364 (XI) in June 2007.
http://www.achpr.org/english/activity_reports/activty22_eng.pdf (accessed
December 24, 2008).

[365]Article 19 v. Eritrea. Note: in this case, Eritrea
presented its arguments on both procedure and the merits. The Commission
rejected most procedural arguments and all arguments on the merits.

[366]
An opinion by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in
November 2007 concluded that the incarceration of the G15 members since
September 2001, “at a secret location, during which they have had no
access to legal counsel or contact with their families, have not been presented
before a judicial authority, and have not been formally charged, seriously
contravenes article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.” UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Opinion 23/2007
(Eritrea), Nov. 27, 2007, ¶26. The Working Group rejected Eritrea’s
contention that the prisoners were being held because of grave crimes rather
than because of their criticism of Isayas’s governance. It noted that the
government had never brought specific charges against them and therefore
concluded that their incarceration for exercising their rights to opinion and
expression is also a “clear violation” of article 19 of the
Covenant. Ibid., 27. The Working Group demanded their immediate release. Ibid.,
30.

[368]See List of Ratifications of International
Labour Conventions, Eritrea. Available in http://webfusion.ilo.org/public/db/standards/normes/appl/appl-byCtry.cfm?lang=EN&CTYCHOICE=2100
(accessed January 2, 2009).

[369]See ILO, ‘Forced
labour in Myanmar (Burma): Report of the Commission of Inquiry appointed under
article 26 of the Constitution of the International Labour Organization to
examine the observance by Myanmar of the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No.
29),’ Geneva, 1998, Part IV, Examination of the case by the Commission.

[372]International
Labour Organization, General Survey of 1979 on the abolition of forced labour
by the Committee of Experts, Paras 36 and 37. The ILO has requested information
from Eritrea to clarify its compliance with its treaty obligations several
times, see:
http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/pqconv.pl?host=status01&textbase=iloeng&querytype=bool&hitdirection=1&hitstart=0&hitsrange=2000&sortmacro=sortyear&query=Eritrea@ref&chspec=9&
(accessed April 1, 2009).

[375]For an excellent analysis of US-Eritrea
relations see, Dan Connell, “Eritrea and the United States: the
‘war on terror’ and the Horn of Africa,” in Richard Reid
(ed.) Eritrea’s External Relations: Understanding its regional role
and foreign policy (Chatham House, 2009).

[380]AP, “Eritrea denounces US
‘meddling’ in the Horn of Africa,” International Herald Tribune
June 11, 2008 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/13/news/Eritrea-Djibouti-US.php
(accessed January 8, 2009).

[381]Stefano Manservisi, Director General, European
Commission, Directorate-General Development and relations with African
Caribbean and Pacific States, Letter to Elsa Chyrum, June 18, 2007, on file
with Human Rights Watch.

[390]The report of the fact-finding mission stated in part:
“Members of the delegation, while acknowledging the need for a
transitional phase after the war and the process character of democratic
transition, underlined the need for identifying a perspective for returning to
a democratic process and reinstating basic human rights in line with the
international commitments of Eritrea. They were very concerned that the “no
war no peace situation” was used to justify the upholding of an
undemocratic regime.” p. 8.

[391]Human
Rights Watch interviews with refugees, UN officials and diplomats, Italy and
Asmara, October and December 2008 and January 2009.

[392]Human Rights Watch interview with Gaim
Kibreab, London, December 11, 2008; Human Rights Watch interview with former
conscript who worked on a private farm, London, November 13, 2008; Human Rights
Watch interviews with Eritrean refugees, London, UK, and Sicily, Italy, September
and October 2008; Human Rights Watch interview with UN official, by phone,
December 19, 2008; and interviews with diplomats, by phone, January 13, 17, and
22, 2009.